Luxury

I guess I could go on and on about this super vacation in the wilderness that we just had, but everyone else will soon be bored by it. Can't resist, though, to include some of the more unusual "luxuries" that we had that are normally never even considered in a wilderness Boundary Waters trip. Real things to sit down on. A refigerator. A stove. Windows all the way around with screens! Potty in a real room, lights for the evening, a furnace for heat (as if we needed it!) So check it out!!

Critters

When we've been in the boundary waters before we are always prepared for the big critters-Bears. It's prudent to be clean--To put your food in a bag and hang it from a very tall tree. We have had contact with them before and it's never a good thing. One year, Ron woke up at the sound of his pans on the bag trap and charged a bear trying to steal empty plastic food bags. That was a treat. But usually the worst the woods yields are the mosquitoes and flies. This year our critter encounters were a bit more tame...squirrels, birds, frogs, 1 northern (that we ate) leeches (ugh. I mean really ugh. I hate those things) a GIANT spider in the outhouse...(a wolf spider I found out later) and a gazillion (seriously) mosquitoes. We were actually in the boundary waters two years ago and we were able to be outside well after dark and didn't even have problems with them on the portage trails. But this year...YIKES! We had to move indoors before the sun even went down. We had to be indoors or be doped up all day to stay away from them. I was bit to shreds. I was one mass of itching flesh. But have you ever tried 'Gold Bond'? Wonderful stuff to take away the itching. Ha! Then there were the brown bats. They were awesome. We discovered the first one on the first night when it flew into the cabin. Ron actually managed to catch it and release it without killing it. The next night we noticed one coming from behind the sign over the door. When looked-5 bats were snoozing there! Wow! Well, they eat those pesky mosquitoes, so we left them to their own devices and didn't have any problems with them. Anyway : my wildlife pictures :

On the necessities of Life

Back to work today. And here I am blogging again. I'm sure to have plenty of new materials for the next few days!!
In some ways it's good to be back into the routine. But I have to tell you about our week in the wilderness. Who would have believed northern Minnesota would be so HOT! It was blazing, and we were in the woods! There were tons of mosquitoes this year so I came back with lots of war wounds. (Did you know Gold Bond is great for mosquito and deer fly bites?) We didn't really get much canoeing, or hiking in, though we did do some swimming and that's a leech story. I have a picture to go with that, but I'll save that bloody story for later. Caught one measly fish. (I don't eat fish personally, but it was an insult to everyone else!) It was too hot for them too. At any rate, I had a chance to sit around and eat. Think. Read. Sweat. Play games. Write. Eat some more. Sleep. We had a down filled sleeping bag, but believe me, we didn't even need the sleeping bag it was that warm. Oh well, It was truly worth it. I could, and did, forget about everything that wasn't important. Funny how you really can survive without the air conditioning, light switches, running water and other such lovely things. Believe me I really appreciate them much more. Now that I'm back I'll have to forgo the mid morning, mid afternoon and mid evening snacks and naps. Hope that works out ok! So Of course here are somepictures: