Finally I have the internet!!!!

Hello!!!  Just sitting here in the trailer at Bellerive’ watching tv on our “English speaking station”!!  Crazy but I am really looking forward to seeing some of the shows I can only see here (“Murdoch Mysteries” and “Heartland”).

We did leave on Wednesday (packing up the whole house again like from the fall – and just dumping it all every which way into the trailer) and had figured out a way to get the dogs out to the trailer (we have left it parked across the road in a parking area for the last 2 months not wanting it go through what we did last year………….digging ourselves out of the driveway for 4 hours…………) we hooked 2 teams up to the snowmachine and ran them over there (about ½ mile) to the trailer and didn’t even put harnesses on them…just ran them off their neck lines !!!  worked pretty good except for the leaders……….. Got on the road about 1p and had to stop in Newberry at the license bureau to get a different plate for the truck – they go by different standards in Canada so it is one way of trying to placate the “Canadian DOT”. 

So far I have only identified 2 things that I forgot from the Deer Park house…………my favorite shirt I just got at Christmas………….and the bottom to the toilet!!!!!!  We have used a camp toilet for forever and I went to use it and opened the lid and saw the carpet underneath!!!!!!  Took it out to clean in the spring and never put it back!!!  On to “Plan B”!!

It was snowing pretty hard so we had the truck in 4 wheel drive as far as we went – which was only about 4 hours!!!  We got through the border crossing at Sault Ste. Marie without problems but then thought the roads were getting too bad so we pulled off close to Sudbury.  Slept the nite in a “un-official semi trucking parking place” in a little town –

Next morning (Thursday) on road again…………got a call from JR Saucier telling us the race in Quebec is canceled!!!!!!  We are ½ way to our Quebec home so it’s a toss up-----we decided to go east (it would have been 340 miles to go back for the race in Kinross in the UP or the same to go east)

Good travels – no problems – got through Ontario without the “evil DOT” stopping us again this year!!!

Into Bellerive’s drive at about 10p and to bed at midnight!

Friday saw Claude briefly and found out the race at L’ Epiphanie was canceled because of the rain they had the nite before and it had made the race trail unsafe.

It was very icy on the parking area here at Bellerive’s so we opted not to train the dogs on Friday or Saturday.  Today (Sunday) we took out 2 teams of 8 with the snow machine and in a blizzard!  The dogs did well though the first team went off the trail a bit because none of us could see the trail!!

Tonite we get to have dinner with the Bellerive family in the house and re-renew our friendship!!!

Today is Wednesday and I thought that on Sunday at Bellerive's we would be able to get on the internet but for some reason it wouldn't work for me..........so today we are in the A & W in Shawinigan so I can give you the latest news!!!

The biggest action this week has been the weather - I know we are not alone...........snow, snow and more snow!!!  The big road grader from Bellerive's company has had to plow our parking area twice already!!!  We managed to run the dogs for a short exercise run yesterday but they pretty much had to wade through parts of the trail that had blown in!!!

Really this is the first day we have have even un-hooked the truck and gone any where!

The plan going forward is another exercise run tomorrow and then pack up and go to the St. Luc race site on Friday.  It is about 1.5 hours away.  This is the race that Claude Bellerive sponsors and put the trail in with the equipment from his company and his own trail groomer - then there is a week with no race and then hopefully the next one will be in Laconia NH!!!

I may be able to post on Friday on our way to the race if there is something exciting to say.........sorry it took so long for me to post!!!

Update for 1/17

Another week; more training successes!!!  After giving some dogs that Randy felt were too slow for our team away to friends, and getting the two hurt dogs back in the team (one of the ones that was hurt, Vinnie, broke a harness lunging in it to go today; then Randy re-hooked him twice more and he broke it all the way into the webbing on the harness!!!!) we now are ready to race with 16 dogs; all with over 500 training miles on them!!!!  Right now we are kind of wishing we had gone to Manitoba, the dogs are looking so good – but knowing that it will be below 0 tomorrow here and that race is farther north and in the prairie and that it’s always colder there, we are glad we “wimped out”!  So now the big question is whether or not the first race in Quebec (Epiphanie) is going to have enough snow on the fields to cover the plow ruts!!  If we don’t leave for there next Wednesday, we will stay here until Friday and go to a race in Kinross about an hour and half from here. Randy would rather do the Quebec race but we will see what happens!  We just finished packing up 3 garbage bags of clothes for the trailer and took a pick up full of dog meat and put it under the floor in the back of the trailer – quite a bit more stuff to pack – I figure it will take me at least one day!

Not too many social events lately- did go out to dinner in a place in Hulbert (about 1 hour from here – the big draw  is that if you get there in the late after noon you can get a table right next to a wall of windows over looking where they feed deer!  When we got there about 50 deer were munching on corn!!! So close that if the window wasn’t there you could touch them!!!  The occasion was Jan and Patti’s birthday – a great time was had by all!!!

That’s about it for now!!  Hasta luego!!!

And the picture doesn't even show what blew off the fence!!!

Well I think I have regained my composure...……..have you ever typed an entire page and then had your computer freeze and you lost the whole blasted thing???????!!!!!!!!  If anyone has any suggestions as to why “Word” would choose to do that to me and what I might do the next time it would be appreciated!!!!  Actually it just did it again to me but this time I “outfoxed” the computer – I didn’t shut it down when it froze – I just shut it and went and made a pie and when I came back and opened it again it was back to normal???  Poltergeist??????

That’s what happened – so now I will try to re-create my masterful storytelling piece…..

The last week or so has been relatively calm………until the blizzard and me getting lost in it and getting the snowmachine stuck!!!!!!

So, we had gotten down to pretty much ice again this last weekend and were training on the east side of the road we live on – because Randy had spent so much time grooming the trail it didn’t lose much of the base and we could still train on it without booting the dogs or hurting their feet.  We were expecting snow but didn’t dream it would come so much or so fast!!! It was welcome but for a few days it was rough getting around…….2 feet in 3 days!!!

It was the last training run that we were going across the road with Randy on a sled with 2 – 8 dog teams with me leading them on the snowmachine – well it proceeded to snow, and then snow harder, and then blizzard while we were out!!  Randy had drawn me a map of where I was to lead him (this is the one part of the trail I don’t know well and it’s ever-changing with everybody making new paths to train on within the trail – so the first team I do OK; only made wrong turns 4 times………..the second team seemed to be going alright until it got to be really really blizzardy and I could hardly see the trail to go ahead!!  About that time I reached a decision point and I remembered that we had gone straight ahead the last time………or was it at another spot?????  So 5 feet into the turn I realized I was wrong and turned hard left= well with 2 feet of snow and me pulling a drag to groom the trail, you guessed it, I buried myself!!!!!  I started madly pawing at the snow around the snowmachine trying to get it to go ahead and knew that Randy would be catching me soon and would be upset……………he did and he was………..  He even hooked the team down so he could get the drag off the machine but it still wouldn’t go ahead – sooooooooo  “I will be back for you------“ and I was left alone in the Lake Superior woods, in a blizzard with a stuck machine 6 miles from home………….   Since I was not going anywhere I decided to get serious about digging myself out – so I peeled of clothes and started in earnest!!!!  I dug all around the machine and under the track and under the runners so the whole machine could drop down to the packed snow and get a grip – at times when I was pawing the snow out from under the runners the machine would drop an inch and I would thank God that my hand had not still been under it!!!!!  I finally got it dug out enough and the drag off and out onto the trail that I thought it could make it out the 5 feet I was off the trail – so I turned the key and it wouldn’t start – I thought it must be flooded so I let it sit for 15 minutes (or so it seemed since I didn’t have a watch………..)  I repeated this process for several more times but to no avail……. I had checked the kill switch (the button on the dash that you press if you want to stop the machine in an emergency) when I was first trying to get it out to make sure it wasn’t pushed down (I had already had that experience of not having start because the button was pushed down on too many occasions….) so I didn’t think that was the problem – 

Then I heard a snowmachine approaching!!!!  I thought it could be Randy but didn’t really know how long I had been out there and knew that when he got back with the dogs he still had to unhook and unharness them and put them back in their circles—it wasn’t Randy – it was Regina Caldwell!!!!! She had tipped over on her snowmachine and was trying to get it re-started when Randy passed by her with the team and asked if she could go give me a lift!  After I asked her if she was AAA she was going to just give me a ride but I wanted to try to get out of “stuck” – so I told her I couldn’t get it started and wouldn’t you know it………..the stupid ***### kill switch was down and she popped it back up and it started!!!!  I must have bumped it again in my fervor trying to get un-stuck!!!! So I pulled back up out of the hole I had dug and onto the trail, hooked the drag back on the machine and away we went with me being pretty proud of myself for digging myself out………….but sheepish about the wrong turn and the kill switch……………..

That was 2 days ago and today we went out to train with the sled; only this time with all 14 dogs that Randy thinks he will race!!!!!  Aside from “getting my jacket on too slowly” so that a dog had time to chew through his neckline, we got started to go on the same trail I still don’t know……….only this time I led for part of the way and then he passed me with the sled to do the side trail!  The dogs were trying to “empathize” with me because they made 2 wrong turns themselves (the second time we had to hook the sled hook to the snowmachine runner to turn them the right way and they could still pull the hook out of the snow and me on the snowmachine!!!  The only way I could stop them was to hold the brake so Randy had to go up and turn them, not just once, but 3 times!!!!  They definitely wanted to go for a longer run!!!

Well our plans have changed again – We were considering going to a race in Vita, Manitoba a week from now but looking ahead at the weather it’s supposed to be near zero here next weekend and it’s always much colder there – Randy says he doesn’t want to be racing in  -20 degrees weather – can’t say as I do either!!! So who knows where or when to next – just don’t want to be “all dressed up and no place to go” with a dog team with over 450 miles on it!!!!!

Snow...............snow ..............snow!!!

Lots!!!!  8 to 10 inches!!!!  We needed it so bad!!! and we got it!!!  today we trained all 16 dogs (all that are able to train at this point) on the trail across the road since we got the good snow yesterday!  We used the snow machine still cause we are not sure of the trail but maybe tomorrow!!!

May God Bless you all in this New Year 2019!!!

Take stock of all your good fortune – family friends and good health!!!

Well the holidays are over went to Carol and John’s along with another couple and Jan Shaw for an appetizer party and then out dancing at the American Legion in Newberry on New Year’s Eve) and it’s back to the regular routine of training everyday – 18 dogs one day and then a team of 3 the opposite days (to get the injured dog, Vinnie, back into shape – he has run 4 miles twice and still is not limping after the time off and the laser treatments!)  Tomorrow we are going to try the sled on our groomed trails on this side – running them so that we miss the difficult triangle turn and only using 6 dogs in each team – it will be more work but hopefully they will gain some speed not using the snow machine to train!

They cancelled the Tahquamenon race that was supposed to be this weekend (the warm weekend and traffic ran the trail down to ice on many parts and it would not have been safe for dogs or people!) and now we are waiting to hear if the Kalkaska race is going to get enough snow for the next weekend – it will almost take a miracle because they don’t have any snow right now!!!  The next weekend after that is supposed to be in Quebe and they don’t have snow there right now either!!!  What a deal – Randy might have the best team he has had in 10 or 15 years and have hardly any races!!!

Tonight we went to a restaurant/inn that I have wanted to go to since I heard it advertised on the radio, Chamberlin’s Ole Forest Inn – an old lake front inn with 2 floors of rooms right out of the 1920’s!!!  Lots of wood and the fireplace and view of Manistique Lake.  We met the owner, Bud, while he was putting wood in the fireplace and he let me go upstairs and look in all of the rooms where the door was open and unoccupied – beautiful!!!  Reminded me of the rooms that were in the movie “Somewhere in Time” that was supposed to be at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island in the early century!

We didn’t use the sled today because we wanted to be sure they would take the turns well as they are not what they are used to – they did fine so the next time will be with the sleds.

We found out from Jan Shaw today that the Kalkaska race is cancelled and re-scheduled for the end of February.  We also called out friend Dave Hochman in Manitoba near Winnipeg and they have 1 foot of snow yet and have a race the 3^rdweekend in January – depending on whether there is a race in Quebec we may go up there to race the first time this year!

Tomorrow is supposed to be training the injured dog, Vinnie but right now we are getting some rain – hope it doesn’t last very long and we lose snow or it ices up!!!!

 Chamberlin's Ole Forest Inn

 Randy looking online for some runner wax!