Heston's and the Big Apple

What a Leap Day it is--Heston's Lodge has made it to the New York Times! Here is a link to the article that is in today's travel section.

Thank you to Greg Breining, TC Worley, and the Times for giving us a memorable day. And because it is February 29, it will make it a whole lot easier for me to remember in the future that it was this day that we made the newspaper in such a large venue.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/02/29/travel/escapes/29gunflint.html

Pizza in the Snow

The oven's ready. The crusts are made. The sauces and toppings are set. It's a go....Pizza in the Snow! It's Winter Tracks time, and we're firing up the oven today to bake some pizza. And it's snowing---finally! (Big sigh of relief.) Even though we've had dustings come down regularly for the last several weeks, it still feels like we've been shorted on snowfalls. The flakes today are of the big, fluffy variety. This will add great atmosphere, and a little moisture, to our pizzas.

Pizza in the summer is a pretty set routine, since we have been doing it for four years. Winter presents another situation. I pre-baked the crusts, as that will speed up the process. In order to keep my hands warm while "building" the pizza, I have latex gloves to put over my thin knit gloves. Of course, standing by the oven will help keep us warm, too. The trickiest part will be keeping the pizza hot while serving it. With any luck, we'll have enough folks here to scoop up the slices as they come out of the oven, before there's time for a cool-off.

Lots of other activities are on the agenda for the day as well: skiing and snowshoeing in the fresh snow, a winter camping demo, a seminar on canoeing, and live radio and music tonight at Trail Center. WTIP will be broadcasting The Roadhouse, from 5-7 p.m. If you can't be up here, be sure to webstream it. I will be interviewed at 5:15 or so, to give listeners an overview of what Winter Tracks is all about. Just go to the website, http://www.wtip.org , and click on the dancing moose, and you'll be able to webstream it.

If you can't be here for our festival, but still need a little dose of winter before it is gone, you can come up some other time in March. With fresh snow coming down to add to our eighteen or so inches still in the woods, it's going to be around for a while. I love March skiing the best, as the days are warmer and longer, and the snow is still in great shape.

Bird Rescue

When we put a new roof on the lodge in 2004, we decided to modify our side porch. As a result, our screened porch on the front of the lodge was impacted. It is no longer totally screened-in, something we intend to remedy. But like so many other projects, we just haven't gotten there yet. We've found that we love the side porch so much, for sitting and drinking our coffee, that we don't even mind being bothered by the bugs.

This situation, however, has presented an occasional challenge for birds. Our bird feeder hangs off of a rafter on the side porch. Once in a while, a bird will fly in the wrong direction when exiting the feeder, and will end up on the screen porch, in the portion of it that still has screen. Most of them can manage to find their way out. Sometimes, though, we will see a bird that is having some struggles getting itself oriented to find the exit. In that case, we will go out to assist.

When I go on the porch to help a bird, I will use my arms to direct it out. Greg prefers to help the birds even more. If needed, he will gently pick up the little ones and carry them to the side porch to release them. I think that he has carried numerous chickadees, nuthatches, and white-throated sparrows, and when he is really lucky, he'll get to help a hummingbird. He has actually held a few hummingbirds very carefully in his hands. One memorable little guy even cheeped a little thank you to Greg, as he perched for a moment longer on his hand before taking off. It was a very sweet moment.

Last week, Greg had his largest rescue ever. Although they don't visit our feeder, we do see roughed grouse, also known as partridge, eating in the birch tree on the other side of the screened porch.

Somehow, one of these larger birds got turned around and found itself stuck inside the porch. It was really having a tough time finding the exit, so Greg came to the rescue.

He picked up the bird, and stroked it gently to calm it down. They let me take a photo of them. Then Greg got ready to let the bird go. We assumed the bird would fly off, as all the rest have.
This one had a more dignified departure in mind. After Greg let it go, it flew a short ways and landed back on the side porch. It then proceeded to walk the length of the porch, and go down the steps, one hop at a time. Last we saw, it was turning the corner at the back of the lodge.

I like to think that this action made the bird feel better, sort of make up for the embarrassment of getting stuck in the first place. It made for a good chuckle for us.

Lovin' That Cold Weather

Here at Heston's, we are really enjoying this cold, cold weather. In fact, we have been keeping a close eye on the thermometer and weather reports, cheering on the extreme lows. This morning at six, it was near twenty below. It may have dropped a bit more by seven a.m., because it often does. But we were already gone.

For the last couple of days, Greg has been assisting in the transport of lumber for the rebuilding of the cabins on the north side of Gunflint Lake. You may remember from my blog postings in May that the Ham Lake Fire took all of our friends' cabins, on that horrible Thursday when the fire reached our lake. After considerable work and clean-up over the summer, it's time to look to the future, and the cabins that will soon go up. This is a monumental task, however, one loaded with details and steps. And cold weather is an important detail in the process.

There is now an ice road that starts at our landing, and goes about two-an-a-half miles across the lake to the property. Greg has been working to keep it open, so that the winter air can reach the ice more easily, and help to make it thicker. A month or so ago, I wrote about the insulative properties of snow, and how we use it to our advantage by banking it around the foundations of the cabins. In this case, he wanted it out of the way. It's working--when he has checked, the thickness of the ice has increased. Our fishermen are also reporting lots of ice when they drill their holes for fishing.

While Greg has been working on this, I've learned some things, too. A number of years ago, in the late winter, I could swear one day that I heard waves under the ice. It struck me as odd, and I wondered if I was hearing things. But I've since found out that there is indeed wave action occurring under the ice. When you are driving on the ice, you are pushing a wave out in front of you. The ice under the vehicle is flexing some, and that pushes the water into a wave. (I may have some of those details off a bit, but it's close.) It was good to hear that I wasn't going crazy, back all those years--that I really had likely heard waves. I've also learned that there is a great deal of information about building ice roads available on the internet, and that there is even a TV program about the ice roads in Canada. Since we don't have television, I had never heard about the show, but several folks have mentioned it to me.

So Greg has been helping to haul loads of lumber across the lake. This morning, I thought that I would ride along to town, while he and the other guys picked up their loads. It was bitterly cold and windy in Grand Marais, too--yay! We saw lots of steam rising off of Lake Superior, forming a large cloud along the horizon. When we got back up here, I skipped out on the ride across the lake......Things to do! Honest! (I'll probably ride along on that part another time.)

Here is a shot of how it looks out there:

Our regular group of fishermen was up over the weekend. They reported fair catching conditions, going home with some nice lake trout. They had one thing to note for us though: Seems that ice road goes right through some prime fishing territory. On one side of the road, it was 30' of water, and the other was about 65'. They have requested that the road be moved this summer, so that next year it won't be in the way of their fishing plans. Greg will definitely work on that.

It's a Dog-Eat-Deer World Out There

That's what I was thinking last night at about 3:15 a.m. No, it wasn't from having a bad dream. Instead, we had just been woken up by a wolf barking and yipping, not far from the lodge. On the warmer nights, we've been leaving a window open a bit, in hopes of hearing these guys. Last night, it was only the one, and I had visions of him standing over a deer that he had just taken down. He was calling to all of his relatives in the pack to come join him in the meal, but no one replied. I can still have a vivid imagination at that hour. This morning, I saw tracks from a small wolf, heading down the road to the log cabins. Could these be from our night visitor? We haven't seen any wolves lately, but they often become more active as winter progresses. Opportunities still lie ahead.

The other day, my computer wouldn't allow me to post a couple of photos, so here they are today. This is the bus all snowed under.

As I mentioned then, the bus isn't rolling very far these days. For the time being, we'll just have to be content with memories of the places that it has carried us. In the summer, a favorite trip to take the bus is merely to the end of the Trail, where we like to go picnicking. Last summer, we packed up the food, our little twin buddies and their brother, as well as other assorted friends and relatives, and took Paul up to his band practice, at Trail's End Cafe. While Paul played music, we feasted on chicken sandwiches, wonderful salads, and other goodies. The little kids played in the water at the landing and had a blast. Won't be long, and that season will be here again.

In the meantime though, thoughts are still towards this---Much more appropriate for February.

Have you been out skiing yet? It's great up this way! The snow is in good shape, and the temperatures are cooperating to keep it that way. If you are hankering for some excellent winter sports fun, you should come on up. It's the best.

Finally a Chance to Ski

The bus won't be moving anytime soon. The snow keeps getting deeper around it and on top of it, a sure sign that winter is still here. And glad we are of that, because for some of us, the skiing is just beginning! On Friday, Sharlene, Addie and I got out on the trail for the first time this year. It was a beautiful day, with the temperature hanging right around ten degrees. The sun was out, and we decided to head over to Warren's Road. This is one of the easiest trails in our system, and it had been years since Shar and I had been there. Addie had never experienced it.

The snow was freshly groomed, as we encountered the groomer guy when we got started. What a delight to ski on tracks that had just been set. We glided along, quite happy to be out there. I missed skiing completely last season, thanks in part to my achilles tendon injury. One of the reasons we chose this easy trail was to see how it would respond. I'm happy to say that it did only its usual complaining when I started, and again at the end. It's almost like a squeaky wheel---once I've started, and it's juiced up a bit, my heel feels like nothing ever happened to it. Then when I am tiring, it kicks up some to remind me of its existence. I can deal with that. I think I'm ready for the Lonely Lake trail next.

That is, once the weather warms up a bit. We got nabbed by the Arctic blast cold front that moved in on Saturday afternoon. I went down to light the sauna around four p.m., and then proceeded to chop out the hole in the lake ice. Since it had just been opened the previous night, the ice was only about an inch thick. The wind made it very cold for the task, but worse than that was the snow that kept blowing into the hole. I shoveled thick slush out a few times, and it would fill right back up. It became quite plain to me that keeping it open for the next four hours (when it was needed) was going to be a real challenge.

Providence stepped in in another form, however, when the power went out around five. In this kind of weather, a power outage that lasts more than a few hours can cause some serious troubles to pipes and water systems. We had some empty cabins, so we went out and started fires in the woodstoves in those, to keep the temps above freezing. I gathered up candles and jugs of water for the fellows who were in Spruce cabin, and broke the news that I likely wasn't going to be able to keep the sauna hole open. They were fine with that, and rightly pointed out that the wind on the lake would whip the warmth right out of a body before even reaching the hole.

Between keeping the fires stoked, filling the oil lamps for light, and listening to the radio for updates---oh, and Greg had to go plow the Mile O' Pine Road---we had a busy few hours. I was preparing to spend the night at Cedar Point, since that cabin was particularly vulnerable to the punishing west wind. Greg figured that he would have to stay in Tamarack. The older cabins just aren't as well-insulated as the newer ones. It was an adventure to be outside, walking from cabin to cabin through the wind, snow and cold. Weather extreme at its best! Thanks to excellent clothing, we never felt cold.

The electricity was restored around eight, so it was a relatively short stretch. Two weeks prior, the power went out in the middle of the night. That outage lasted for about eight hours, but since most folks were still sleeping, it didn't cause much in the way of inconvenience. (Except maybe for early morning coffee drinkers!) This is just something we all take in stride up here, and we are very glad of our old-fashioned conveniences, like oil lamps, outhouses and woodstoves.