Cabin Fever

27 March 2006:
Well, our agility trial came and went without incident. After the initial shock of being in a completely new place without one familiar face, we got down to it. Unfortunately, as my German buddy Bernard would say, we came up "dinks." In other words, double NQ. Been a while since that happened. But Narra garnered new fans as she's prone to do, and, as usual, she looked pretty amazing. Hey, you might as well look good, right?

Another new experience for us was that this trial had only one ring--so the day went very long. Lucky novice folks, we got to close the place down. The venue was pretty cool, though: Camp Bandy. Agility and obedience both indoors and out, plus herding. Wouldn't it be nice to own a place like that some day (in Wisconsin even!). Of course, it would just be for us--no sharing (even for money).

Anyway, despite the length of the day, we decided to drive on, to at least cut down some of the long drive to Grand Marais. There's never a good hotel when you need one, then lo and behold, you've driven six hours and made it north of Duluth to Two Harbors. Totally cut down the remaining drive north.

To make a long (uneventful) story short, we're here in our great little cabin at the Gunflint Lodge about an hour northwest of Grand Marais. Since we arrived in town fairly early, we had most of the day to explore the Gunflint Trail. Our weather karma has returned, it seems, as the day was amazingly beautiful. We had a great time in the cold--not too cold--and snow. Don't know what it is, but the Northwoods definitely owns a part of us. We walk out our door onto frozen Gunflint Lake, and the night sky has more stars than we've ever seen. We hear howling, too; the romantic wants to believe they're wolves, but it's probably just the sled dogs. How sad not to be able to tell the difference! Anyway, it's not so "rustic" a cabin, but it's a good place to think and make art. And, when all is said and done, isn't the wilderness much more fun with a sauna and whirlpool tub anyway? (Not to mention that Buko and Narra have appropriated the king bed.) At least we built a fire.:)