Photo of the Day: The Wolf

Today at work, I just happened to be tending the fire in the woodburning stove when I noticed what at first appeared to be a dog walk nearby to the visitor center. I walked over to the window to get a closer look and realized it wasn't just any dog, but a wolf; Canis lupus! Quickly I ran to get the park camera with zoom lens and hustled back to the window. The wolf had walked out to the end of the snow-covered boat dock, but didn't seem to find a way to get down off of it to the frozen lake surface a few feet below. It turned around and started heading back towards the visitor center. I ran out onto the patio and was lucky enough to snap this photo (along with 3 others that did not turn out nearly as good). Then I observed the wolf walk down onto the ice and trot across the frozen surface of Black Bay to the Kabetogama Peninsula. It was an experience I will never forget!

Skiing Fort Frances' 8th Street Trails

Government Shutdown, day 31. Since the Voyageurs National Park Association has been paying to open the Rainy Lake Visitor Center for the past few weekends, I haven't had any mutual days off with Sierra. Today, being the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, I finally had a day off with my daughter. Noelle, Sierra and I decided to take advantage of it with a day of skiing.

Originally, we were going to go down to Grand Rapids to ski a trail in that area and go grocery shopping at Aldi. It's difficult to justify a 2.5 hour drive and all the associated gasoline when you haven't gotten paid in 3 weeks and you don't know when you're going to get paid next. Instead we opted to stay closer to home with a trip across the border to the 8th Street Trails in Fort Frances. Since we had some Canadian cash on hand, we figured we could even justify going out to eat for the first time this year. We wouldn't be dipping into our bank account for a meal.

It was a quick drive to the trailhead and then we hit the trails.

I really enjoyed skiing there.

We did the first 2 loops. Sierra was a little bit disappointed that there weren't any hills, but the trail itself was narrow and wound through an interesting landscape.

A good portion of the trails meandered through a boggy wetland that we had hiked back in the fall of 2016.

Altogether we skied about 3 kilometers. It was just the right length for Sierra.

It was pretty obvious that she was starting to get a bit tired towards the end, and she kept falling. After getting back into the car we drove over to DQ for our Canadian lunch and then back into the Falls to relax a bit before dinner.

Freeze Yer Gizzard Blizzard 5k 2019

It was a cold night last night. Temperatures bottomed out at -38F. This morning, about a half an hour before the start of the race, the temperature reading was still only -33F.

Icebox Days would live up to its name this year!

I bundled up and headed out.

It was too cold for Noelle and Sierra to come out to cheer me on. The race started at promptly 9 am with the start time temperature at -31F! This would be the coldest run of my life.

Considering how little training I did for this race, I feel I did pretty well. I came in 8th overall, with a time of 24:09. That comes out to about a 7:46 pace per mile.