Bruce and I are home again. I got home on Monday the 14th and he got home on the 16th. It was a very long driving trip – Gunflint to New York to Ohio to Texas (the southernmost tip) to Oklahoma City to Missouri to Nebraska and back to Minneapolis. In all we drove just over 5800 miles and 4 of our 16 days were not driving days. Luckily we managed to avoid all the storms coming through.As usual when we got home, the managers had everything humming along. I’m not sure that they need us for anything. Cabins #26 and #27 are coming along fine. The exterior water and septic are finished. Cabin #26 has shingles and interior walls. The electrical inspector comes tomorrow to OK the rough-in. By Monday the roof on Cabin #27 will be finished. Getting the roofs shingled really takes a lot of pressure off the builders. Of course, Bruce is ready to start renting them.
Gunflint Lake froze on the 16th. Usually it skims over at night but this year it finished icing over during the day. By full daylight we still had open pockets of water steaming on the north side of the lake. At noon it was all covered over. It will be a while before we walk on it. As is usual we will wait until we think the ice is safe and then wait another week. This is definitely one of those moments when it is better to be safe than sorry.
The deer are also coming into the lodge grounds regularly. The guests are amazed at how willing the deer are to eat out of your hands. We don’t seem to have as many deer as usual but we definitely have more wolves than last year. We are regularly seeing wolves on the lodge grounds. It will be interesting to watch the interaction between the wolves and deer.
We have about 4 inches of snow. This afternoon Bruce is going to take the groomer out on the Little Pine Trail to see if guests can ski on it. We are getting very light snow now as I write this. About four inches would be nice but we would not turn down a foot or so.
The pictures above are my latest attempts. The roof is the north side of Cabin #27 getting shingles. I actually took it to send my youngest grandson a picture of our bobcat. The second picture was taken by my neighbor, Melissa. It is of a wolf that was eating corn they had put out for the deer. She took it out her window. You can’t imagine how many deer we have around here.
The lodge is decorated for Christmas. I always think it is warm and cozy with all the garlands hanging. All of us in the Gunflint family wish you and your families a very merry Christmas.
