Porcupine Mountains Adventure

The spring thaw is majorly in effect here, and with the temps in the low to mid 70's this weekend-freakish weather-we decided to make the short drive to the Porkies today.  We went to the Presque Isle Park/Campground and walked across the suspension bridge to the little island.  The water was raging, giving us a nice show with the waterfalls that are normally pretty tame during the summer.

The summer view from the bridge.

Today's view off the bridge.

Looking straight down from the bridge.

We brought the house dogs with.  Thunder was pretty scared of all the rushing water.

The obligatory"standing on the rock photo"-Elliot did not come along.

Squirrel.

Today.

Summer



Today.



Summer.





Today.

Summer.





Summer.

Today.



Then we decided to check on South Bounday Rd.  Its a 25 mile long road that connects one end of the park to the other.  Its paved but is still in the wilderness and is a snowmobile trail in the winter-no wheeled vehicles can traverse it, its groomed by a trail groomer and not cleared of snow.  We've been wanting to dog sled it for a couple years now and never managed to do it.  This year, we checked on it late December or early January and there was really not much snow up there, so we just assumed that it wouldn't be sleddable this year with the low snow levels locally.  It turns out we were wrong.  We drove in maybe 10 miles and there was snow.  It didn't look like too much snow, so naturally, Jeremy figured our four wheel drive would get us through it.  No.  With the hard pack from the snowmobiles and groomer, all the truck did was slide to the side of the road and end up getting sucked down into the ditch.

Thankfully, shortly after we realized it was going to be stuck, a guy in a jeep came along from the same direction we had.  He tried to give us a yank, but it soon became obvious that it was too much, so he offered to give Jeremy a ride back to Wakefield, the nearest town, 25 miles away, to get a tow truck.  Autumn and I stayed with the truck because we had three little dogs and Thunder with us.

The view of the road ahead of the stuck.  Turns out there was quite a bit of snow and I'm bummed that we never checked back and ran the dogs on it.





We were lucky the weather was nice and warm and we made the most of it while we waited.

The dogs had lots of fun and gots lots of exercise.

Then the tow truck got there...

It was a pretty expensive adventure, to the tune of 100 bucks for the tow, but we decided to look on the bright side-after all, how many times will we ever get to walk down the middle of South Boundary Road with four loose dogs and not have to worry about any kind of traffic? (no one else is crazy enough to try to tackle the snow).  We were also pretty lucky that the guy in the jeep came along right away, or it would have been a LONG walk to get cell reception, and after they left to head to town for the tow, no other traffic came along at all.  

 After we got the truck out, we decided to go back to the park and cookout like we had planned.

Mmmmm brats...

 



Spring Thaw

The creek right across the road from our house.

Its thawing fast in the 65 to 70 degree temperature we've been having.  We call this Mud Season, because of the condition of our driveway and dog yard.  I didn't take any pictures of it, but trust me, the dog yard is a soupy, muddy mess right now.  These are more pleasant pics of the thaw.

The woods across the road from our house.



Elliot making a snow dam on Wednesday-like 65 degrees...




Me and Jeremy checking out the creek that runs through our property.  It only really runs when its really wet, like now or when it rains a lot.



Our creek.



Trying to coax the dogs across the creek.



Jeremy and Spike.



Our house and sauna, view from the top of our hill.



Breeze and Rain in the kennel.  The other two pups-Storm and Cloud are in the dog yard now.



The creek in the front yard flooded.



The photographer.(Autumn)













Winter is Over

We had our last sled run last Friday, March 9.  We were hoping that all that new snow we got during the Leap Day storm would extend our season, but on Saturday, the weather turned and it was in the 50's and pretty much has been in the 50's -60's since, so our snow is very rapidly disappearing.  Now we have to wait until enough snow has melted to get the four wheelers out to continue training.  The dogs have a vacation now, at least for a little while.  We knew the weather was going to go bad, so we trained four days last week, and put a total of almost 80 miles on, 27 of which were on the last day, Friday.
Some pics of our last run of the season on snow:

On Saturday, when it was sunny and warm-like upper 50's, we decided to take our little house dogs up to some waterfalls by Black River Harbor, which is maybe 15 miles away from home.  Elliot went and did something else, and we brought Autumn and her boyfriend, Jerad, with.  There was still quite a bit of snow, but luckily a lot of snow shoers walk the trails to the falls all winter, so there is a nice packed trail and we were able to walk it with little trouble without snow shoes.

Autumn and Jerad

Autumn being brave and walking on a less used path.

Snow shoers were walking all over the river when it was colder.

Jerad and Autumn