and now it's Happy New Year!!!

 It's been a pretty quiet week..........dinner at Jan's was great with a 15 pound turkey and all the fixings !!!!  Frank and Regina Caldwell were also there and enjoyed Jan's wonderful hospitality - Randy Meyer (the 96 year old neighbor that decided not to go to Texas for the winter because he called the funeral home there and was told too many people were dying from covid...........) was supposed to be there but he didn't feel well so we took a dinner-to-go to his home.  The next nite we went back to Jan's for leftovers!!!  Talk about spoiled!!!

We have trained every day but yesterday since we got the big blizzard around Christmas - we now have probably a foot of snow on the ground and Randy used the sled with me following on the snow machine for the first time this year!!!  The dogs seemed to like pulling the sled again and did a nice 17 mile run!!!

Of course no plans for New Years - other than to wish our wonderful daughter, Amy, Happy Birthday tomorrow!!!!!  That was a New Year's Eve I will never forget!!!

I have been thinking I should be doing more exercise than just hooking up the dogs once a day so I finally pulled out the cross county skies and boots this afternoon---------boy am I ever out of shape!!!!! my arms , my legs and not very good balance!!!! so I only went out to the first curve in the driveway - maybe 1/4 of a mile and thought I should quit while I was ahead and upright!!!!!

I am supposing another sled run tomorrow - we sure have good conditions finally!  The latest we have heard, the Chezik may be coming up this coming week and then next weekend Jim Moyer and Lydia are planning to come up and train - both will be so much fun to see again!!!

That's it for now!!!!  May God Bless you every day of 2021!!!!

Well we still have the snow on the ground................

 But just barely enough to make it good for the dogs' feet and not nearly enough to be using a snow machine to train!  So we are doing a lot of "slide around the corners" while training!!  We are lucky that what snow we did get has not melted away, but we didn't get the big blast of snow that was predicted for us.  We still have gone only 25 miles and some days less depending on the conditions and "doggy attitude".  We wanted to be going 35 miles this coming week or so to be ready for the race here (the Tahquamenon Country race) on January 9th (41 miles) but at this moment it is looking like that might get cancelled ....we are waiting to see what the State Park staff for the Muskellonge Lake state park where the race start happens says about how many people can be present at the park at one time - if they say 25 that pretty much cancels it with 40 teams already entered!!  We should know by tonight for sure.   So even if it is cancelled we still have to keep training with the idea that the end of January we will be going to the race in Wyoming and that is 35  miles every day for 7 out of 8 days so we are still lacking some mileage!  As of right now, there is no sign of that race being cancelled............

Our social life has been a bit busy...........last Tuesday a Mexican dinner at the Browns with the Waltman's, Jan Shaw and a another neighbor, Randy, who is 96 years old and generally spends winters down south, but didn't go this year because of civid.  Last nite we went to Waltman's for wine and hors dourves!  Randy the neighbor was there also and has some wonderful stories from his 96 years here on earth!!!!

Tomorrow we drive 2.5 hours to the west side of Escanaba to pick up some more frozen blocks of beef dog food for us, Bruce and Jim Moyer - all tolled we will be carrying almost 3 ton of meat on Bruce's trailer!!!!

The plan for our Christmas day is Mass and having dinner at Jan's house!!!  In case I don't remember before Friday I will say that Randy and I wish God's Blessings on you and yours on this Christmas and all through the coming year!!!!!!!🎄🎄

Sometimes you get exactly what you ask for!!!!

 Finally!!!!!!!  About 6 inches of snow!!!!!  Too bad it was a week late for Luke and Erica and the grandkids but we are thankful for our dogs' feet that it is finally here!!!  We were coming up with a new foot injury to take care of every other training run!!!!!  Not quite enough to train with the snow machine today but it won't take very long before we have enough with quite of bit of snow forecasted!!  We trained today and the dogs seemed really happy to have snow to run in !!!!!

I don't know where the time has gone!!!!

 

This year's Christmas tree - we got it from the top of a tree someone had already cut down to clear the trail!!!

Kitch-iti-kipi Spring near Manistique - those fish are in the natural spring that stays 45 degrees year round - probably 20 pounds or more

you go out into the spring on a raft using (in this case) child power turning a wheel that pulls the raft out

cooking steak dinner in our very tiny house

formed by the mist coming off from the Tahquamenon Falls  

Annabelle, Elaina and Stephen

Stephen's first hunt with his father

the wheel the kids used to guide the raft along the cable

the falls - first time for the the kids!!!

It should be obvious from the photos that we had our son Lucas, his wife Erica and the 3 grandkids up for an early Christmas celebration!!!!  They arrived on Thursday nite and stayed until Monday!!!!!  We had such fun!!!  Saw all the local attractions and even got a first-time hunting expedition for Stephen hunting the bothersome red squirrels!!!!!  Even had a hot dog roast in the fire pit here!!!  2 of the 3 kids stayed overbite with us while the others got to play in their hot tub in the room in Newberry!!!!  Also saw 2 bald eagles on our way to the Kitch-iti-kipi Spring - so that contributed to Erica's wish for "nature sightings"!!!!

Since then we have still been training every day and at  one point were up to 24 mile runs but the ground was still frozen and still no snow so we cut back to slower and shorter runs!!!  The race meeting happened Thursday so it looks like the race is still on but who knows when we will get snow (very unusual for this area and this time of year - last year we had a couple of feet on snow on the ground at this time) and what the covid 19 restrictions might be on January 9th!!!!  I will keep you informed!!!!