UP 200 Dog Sled Race

This past weekend was the UP 200 Dog Sled Race. It is a qualifying race for the Alaskan Iditarod race. Just over 30 teams entered and started in the Marquette area on Friday night. The teams started arriving in Grand Marais late Saturday morning. Grand Marais is the turn-around point. Each team is required to rest 16 hours, split between the three checkpoints.

This first picture was taken at what we locals call "four corners." It is located on H58 where the paved road turns west toward Sable Lake. This shot was taken from the intersection looking toward Sable Falls. You can see the snowmobilers that were stopped. The dog sled teams turn right and head across a field right in front of where the snowmobilers were stopped.



The arrival gate was located right in front of the museum. Unfortunately, I did not have the museum open. I spent the end of last week going over the first proof of the agate book and didn't have time to organize the museum's inventory. Everything is still in bins from my last art show in December. When the dog sled teams arrive, their official time is noted.






Then, volunteer handlers assist the team and lead the dogs to the area behind the recreation center. The dogs are fed and rested, as are the mushers.




The Grand Marais Women's club sold food, which is one of the club's fundraisers. There was also a silent auction and other items for sale to benefit the UP 200.



The last team left Grand Marais around 11:00 pm.

Cross Country Photos

While skiing with friend, Dianna Bell, we left the normally groomed trail over by Sable Falls and skied on a snowshoe trail toward the sand dunes. When we got to the footbridge going over Sable Creek, we took our skies off and hiked into the dunes. It was such a glorious day -- second in a row with sunshine. That doesn't happen much in Grand Marais during the winter due to the lake effect clouds and snow. There was not much wind so the ice was floating off shore. You can see a couple of rows of icebergs hugging the shore, with the floating ice beyond that. Notice how there is more floating ice this day, compared to a week ago. If we get a strong wind from the north any time soon, it will continue to pile up the ice to form even bigger ice bergs.

Here are a few more photos from my ski trip the other day in the Seney Wildlife Refuge. The first photo shows the color contrast you can get in the woods during winter.



Throughout the Seney Refuge, there are creeks, rivers, and ponds that are managed to provide habitat for wildlife.



Along the ski trail we saw this tree that something had clawed the bark off. Some of the splinters were five inches long. We thought at first that a bear must have been looking for food, but then we realized that bears are supposed to be hibernating in the winter. We wondered whether it has been so mild that a bear woke up from hibernation a little early?



Along the edge of some of the fields the snow is starting to get a little sparse.



In the woods, though, there is still plenty of snow on the ski trails.

Seney Refuge Ski Adventure

I had so much fun a couple of weeks ago skiing at the Seney National Wildlife Refuge, that I had to go back. Friend, Wendy, and I took off for a half-day adventure. It sure is nice to take a few days off after the long hours of working on the book.

The Seney Refuge has a series of dams and other gates that control the water levels of the ponds and wetlands. This photo was taken of the lichen growing on the concrete top of one of these gates.



Here is the gate and the open-water pond. There were animal tracks all over the place. The critters know where there is open water. I liked the patterns that developed on the ice that hung to the side bank of the pond.




This is the post-sunset shot I took from my driveway last night.

Winter Scenes around Grand Marais

Last Sunday I went snowshoeing with Friend, Renee Beaver-Stocking. We headed down the North Country Trail east of town. We talked with a family who has a cabin in the woods. I didn't get my camera out to get a great shot, but you can still see the "carriage" that the parents pulled by snowmobile to transport their kids and groceries. The second photo below is the Sucker River.




Our annual snowfall is down around 75 inches. For the first time this winter I saw ice in the channel out at Coast Guard Point.





This winter, the bay has frozen, broken up, and re-froze several times. Right now, it is frozen again -- but not solid.

More Winter Sand Dunes Photos

When we were up in the dunes the other day, I took quite a few pictures. Below are some more that were taken during the snowshoe. Notice how the shore photos this week look quite a bit different from those I shot a week or so ago. There was a lot more floating ice. The floating "pancakes" are shown in the third photo. We are getting stiff wind from the north today, so all that floating ice will pile up and make bigger icebergs. I'll get more shots in a few days and continue to do so to illustrate how dynamic the Lake Superior shoreline is during the winter.

Sand Dune Adventure -- Another One!

A couple of days ago, friends Kim Amthor and Wendy Lynne and I snowshoed from the Sable Visitor's Center to Sable Lake, up into the dunes, across to Lake Superior, and back. It was cloudy but not too windy, so it was a great snowshoe.

The patterns in the snow were magnificent -- almost agate-like in places.



The depth gauge was located around ten feet from shore in Sable Lake.



The views were spectacular.

Winter Scenes

At the request of my son, Jonathan, I am going to commit the time to update the blog more often. I finished the book yesterday and sent the text files off for pre-production. It will take around a week to convert the files from Microsoft Word into what ever the magic software that the printer needs. Once the printer gets the files, it will be 3 1/2 to 4 months before we get finished copies of the book.

The miscellaneous winter shots include another sunset taken from the shore of the Big Manistique Lake in Curtis, MI. Although my friends and I all brought our snowshoes, there was so little snow there that we didn't need them.




Here are a couple photos of my friends, Sandee and Dianna, skiing in the Seney Refuge.




When I left my house this afternoon to drive over to the cross country ski trails in the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, I snapped this photo of the sand dunes in the distance.



Here is a shot I took on the ski trail. It is Sable River, not far from where it flows out of Sable Lake.



This snow gauge is on ski trial A. We get an inch or two of snow every once in a while to make up for the condensing of the snow pack. As a result, we have had a steady amount on the ground of 12 inches for more than a month.



I took this photo from the grocery store, looking east toward the bay. Even though we have not had a lot of snow, there is still quite a mound behind the Post Office Museum.

Seney Refuge Ski

This past weekend was our annual All-Nighters weekend. It began 23 years ago when some of the women from Grand Marais and the surrounding area got together without husbands and kids. Now all of our kids are adults, but we continue the tradition. This year we met at a resort in Curtis. The first photo was taken of sunset over the Big Manistique Lake. We learned from the owner of the resort that it is the second biggest lake in the Upper Peninsula, with Lake Goegebic being the largest. The Big Manistique Lake is 10 miles by 8 miles! The remaining photos were taken on the way back to Grand Marais when Sandee Sibbald, Dianna Bell, and I skied the Seney National Wildlife Refuge trails. It was sunny and beautiful outside and the trails were in terrific shape. We had not skied the refuge for a couple of years so it was fun getting back there.