Wow - I'm getting lazy about posting so here's an update.

Since Eric is on the road every week, I've taken on the job of planning a date every weekend. Last weekend we went to Patty and TO's for his birthday on Friday night. We had our date on Saturday - we went to Randolph's for dinner which is a nice restaurant downtown. After dinner we went to a coffee house in LoDo and then went to an improve comedy show.

We just went to see Little Miss Sunshine tonight which was a fantastic movie. Tomorrow night is our date and I'm surprising Eric with an Av's game. I'm sure he'll be really excited when he finds out. It's just a pre-season game but they're playing the LA Kings. We're really excited for hockey season to start next week!

We're still getting unpacked and settled, but we're almost there. I've been job hunting on the internet this week but don't have any good leads yet. Eric got home last night and we're going to celebrate TO's birthday tonight. I made chili around lunch time and it's been simmering all day so hopefully it will be good.

I put up a bird feeder about a week and a half ago and I didn't think the birds were ever going to find it - but today they did. Early this morning we had the enjoyment of watching a large squirrel attacking the feeder. It's hanging on a rope from a tree branch. He would climb up from the deck railing and hang onto the feeder shaking it so the seeds would fall to the ground. Shortly after that a House Finch found the feeder and the squirrel was reduced to watching the bird eat from a branch. There are about half a dozen birds stalking the feeder now. Annie saw them so she's been watching closely and barking freequently. Fortunately the birds don't seem to mind her too badly. There are a couple other kinds of birds around, but I haven't been able to find them on the internet to see what they are yet.

We were also told that we might get snow this weekend! That would be super crazy - we'll see what happens :)

I've been getting settled back in Colorado so sorry I haven't posted. Eric has been off work since I got back on Tuesday because he is changing jobs. It's been really nice to have almost a week of just us. He starts traveling on Monday to DC to train for his new position. He will be on the road every week for around two months. It won't be too bad though - Sunday night through Thursday evening so we at least have Friday and Saturdays.

I've been jogging since I got back - two days on, one rest - so I'm working on getting back into the swing.

I'm back! I flew in yesterday afternoon and am still working on getting settled. Here's a recap of the trip:

9/3 - Sunday
Flew into Minneopolis/St. Paul airport and met up with dad a little after noon. We drove to Eveleth, MN and stayed in the greatest Super 8 in the world. That sounds funny, but it's true. It was a really nice hotel. It was also across from their hockey hall of fame, but unfortunately that was closed.

We met up with the other people on the trip - Dave and Diana (father and daughter) and Austin and Pat (husband and wife). We packed our bags for the morning and went to dinner at The Sawmill with the rest of the group.

9/4 - Monday
We got up at 5:30 AM and had breakfast at the hotel. Good waffles :)

We hit the road a little after 6:00 AM and drove to Ely, MN. Dad and I went to the Zup's grocery store and got steaks, frozen veggies and pound cake for the first night's dinner. Then we all headed out of town to Moose Lake and the Williams & Hall Outfitter office. We checked in, got all our packs out of the car and down to the dock and everything go loaded into the motor boats. We were motor boated up to the border with the canoes and equipment. After checking in with the border guard and getting our fishing licenses we hit the water.

Paddling is a little more difficult in reality than it looks. We were pretty slow starting out, but we did manage to keep up with the rest of the group. We paddled up through Prarie Portage, Burke Lake and North Bay selecting a camp site on a small island on the top of North Bay. There were Bald Eagles like I had never seen them before. We saw 7 on the way to base camp.

We set up camp and hit the water to practice casting. There are four main kinds of fish in the lakes - Largemouth Bass, Smallmouth Bass, Walleye and Pike. The Bass are pretty standard, Walleyes stay in deep water so they're pretty hard to catch. The Pike are in grassy waters along with the Bass, but they have a lot of teeth, fight a lot harder and are very bony so we didn't want to eat them. We were going for Bass. I had my lesson and casted about 20 times. As I was pulling my lure out of the water to get ready to cast a again a Pike leapt from the water chasing my bait. It scared me so bad I sucked in about half the air in Canada and jumped to the side. I just about fell out of the canoe or flipped the whole thing, but we managed to stay in.

After the casting lesson, we started making dinner. Dad and I didn't have any watch so we had to go by the sun all week. We ate steaks, rice, veggies and pound cake for dinner which was really good.

I woke up during the night and my hands and forearms hurt so bad I couldn't go back to sleep for over an hour. Luckily when I woke up in the morning they felt a lot better.

9/5 - Tuesday

We broke camp and dad and I packed up and headed out early before the other canoes. I moved to the back of the canoe (I had been in the front the first day). In the front of the canoe you really need a strong paddler while the back person does the steering and navigation using printed maps. I had a lot of fun learning to navigate. We went up from North Bay into our first real obstical. A beaver built a dam along a narrow canal. We had to get through high grasses and low water to the dam and then had to unload, drag the canoe over and push back in. All of the other portages had been pretty standard so this was the first time we got knee deep in mud and water. After the dam, we went through several short portages and several more lakes to arrive at Shade Lake where we made our base camp. Since dad and I arrived first we scouted out several sites and found one with a fabulous view, great fire setup and a trail back into the woods where there were areas cleared for tent sites. When everyone got there we set up camp again and hit the water to get dinner.

I was still a little nervous what my reaction would be after the Pike incident, but I never had any other scares. :) I caught two Smallmouth for dinner and we fried them up. It was the best fish I had ever had. I also got a really good night's sleep. The weather has been great - warm but not too warm during the day and nights in T-shirts and underwear with the sleeping bag partially zipped.

9/6 - Wednesday

We headed up to a smallish unnamed lake directly above Shade Lake. The night before when we went out to catch dinner we started a category of size called a "dinner fish". When we went up to this lake we caught so many fish it was crazy. Almost every one was a "dinner fish" and some of them were really impressive. We caught so many fish that I named the lake Dinner Lake.

After several hours we decided we needed a break so we pulled the canoe over and walked down a portage we heard was swamped in to see how bad it was. It was a good walk and we saw that the portage was passable. We met a couple guys halfway down the portage (we didn't see other people too often) so we chatted with them on the way back. When we got back to the canoe we could see storm clouds rolling in so we headed across the lake to our portage. It started lightning when we got there so we got off the water to wait. We decided after a few minutes to portage over to Shade and wait it out there. We watched the storms go through and finally got enough of a break to paddle back to camp. After we got back we waited for the rest of our group. Austin and Pat made it back a few minutes later and Dave and Diana just barely made it. They pulled up their canoe and it started hailing within five minutes. We had a pretty big storm come through but it passed quickly enough that we were able to make dinner and then hit the hay. We were really happy that we had decided to come back when we did.

9/7 - Thursday

Thursday morning the weather was nice, but a little cooler. We decided to head up the "S Chain" (a line of lakes which all start with an S). We went up to Sultry and were fishing for a while when my neck started hurting a lot so we decided to head back. Dad was catching pan sized fish right and left, but no dinner fish.

The wind started picking up and got heavy enough for good whitecaps on the lakes. At the portages we debated waiting vs. going for it a few times but decided to keep going each time. We had our life jackets strapped on tightly and we had to paddle really hard to get through the water. There were times when we were paddling as hard as we could and the boat wasn't moving! We hugged the shoreline using the woods for cover whereever we could and finally made it back to Shade. Being the biggest body of water, getting back to camp was pretty rough. When my dad looked back at me we noticed clouds rolling in quickly - we needed to get to land fast. We paddled as hard as we could and made it back. Austin and Pat made it back a little while later and once again we were worrying about Dave and Diana. The lightning was amazing - very clear and bold strikes coming from two different areas of the sky. It was really a show.

Finally, we saw Dave and Diana come through the portage and they had to paddle Shade in the lightning. They made it back and we got camp as ready as we could. Austin and Pat put up a large tarp and we all stood under it to watch the storm. We got large hail again. The storms kept coming in but we were able to get enough of a break to make dinner. We decided to eat more of the food we carried in because we didn't want to carry it out. We made pasta for dinner which was great. We also steamed some fish.

It stayed relatively dry, but the wind howled all night. The temperature dropped a lot - we were at least down into the 40's if not the 30's overnight.

9/8 - Friday

In the morning we sat down in a wind bunker made by a canoe and the natural landscape to stay out of the wind. We used the camp stove to boil water for hot chocolate and oatmeal. Dad and I decided to have a lazy morning reading and relaxing to see if the wind would die down. We both napped and read and finally decided to head out to West Lake for a little fishing.

We got to West and dad caught a dinner fish immediately. A few minutes later Dave and Diana came paddling up the lake. They were heading in because it was 5:30 PM! We headed in behind them - only fishing for about 20 minutes but we caught dinner so we were good.

9/10 - Saturday

We decided to go back to West Lake since we only had a few minutes there the day before. We spent most of the day on the lake, but the fish didn't start biting until around lunch. He caught some great fish and we headed back in the afternoon. We got our packs ready for heading out the next day and made dinner. Since my neck was still hurting we wanted to make sure we had an easy day since we would spend the next two days paddling.

9/11 - Sunday

We headed out early in the morning and headed down to North Bay. Along the way we found a tiny baby snapping turtle. Since we couldn't find any good sites we decided to go one lake further to Burke and camp on an island there.

When we were portaging through to Burke, we came to a small bay where three otters were playing. Once we got a little more in the open, we saw a large white tailed deer had also come to the water for a drink. It was amazing.

We got to the island and chose our campsite. There were two very small islands within 50 yards of each other that are connected when the water is low, but since the water was good they were seperated. We were sitting around the campfire after dinner when we heard a splash. A bull moose had been swimming by and heard us so he pulled himself out of the water and walked up to the island next to us. I couldn't believe it. We watched as he walked down the island and got back in the water at the end. Then we watched him swim to the mainland on the other side.

If we had stayed on North Bay as planned we would have missed the otters, deer and moose so we were all happy we stayed where we did.

9/12 - Monday

When we woke up in the morning we found out there had been a little excitement during the night. Apparently we had a visitor although noone knew what it was. Something banged into the canoes loudly during the night. Dave and Austin both came out to look but didn't find anything. Dad and I had a tent site pretty far away and slept through it.

After breakfast we were lucky enough to hear a moose trumpeting and a few minutes later a pack of wolves howling. It was so crazy to see and hear so many things when the majority of the week all we had seen were squirrels.

I found a mouse trying to get into our lunch when I went back to the tent and saved our food. We packed up and hit the water once again. We spent the morning paddling and got to Prarie Portage at 11:00 AM. We had the border guard let Williams & Hall know we were there early and did a little shopping in their store. Unfortunately the outfitter didn't get the message so we waited on shore until the scheduled pick up time of 3:00 PM. Once we got back we hit the road and made it back to the hotel and a hot shower. We went to The Adventurer for drinks and dinner - it was fabulous.

9/13 - Tuesday

We got up at 5:30 AM and met everyone for breakfast and to say goodbye. We headed to the airport and I waited with dad until his flight boarded at a little after noon. I got a 30 minute chair massage in the airport atrium which actually helped my neck and shoulders a lot and then headed for my gate. My flight took off on time and Eric surprised me at baggage claim. We went to the Mills mall where I took a map I bought of Quetico National Park to be framed and had dinner at Jillian's.

I think that just about brings us up to speed. I am loading all of the pictures onto my Picasa site so check them out when you get a chance. We had a fantastic trip!

I'm at the nicest Super 8 Motel in the world here in Evelynth, MN. It's crazy nice. We got up at 4:45 AM today and all of our packs are stuffed full and in the car. We're having breakfast and then heading up to Ely, MN to the outfitter who will bring us to the border. I'm really excited about the trip but will miss Eric and the doggies a lot :(

Wish me luck! I've had my last shower for 9 days - how scary is that!?!

Sorry I haven't posted for a few days - I've had issues with the site and haven't been able to log in. Anyway, I am here now.

We are moved into the house and surrounded by boxes. I've been unpacking for two days and there is still stuff all over the place. The important thing is that our stuff has arrived so we are now capable of housing guests. :)

I am leaving in the morning for our fishing trip! I think I have everything I need and have most of it packed. I will try to take a notebook on the trip and jot things down when I get back.

This week has flown by and it still doesn't seem like we actually live here. The views are amazing. I am constantly impressed by the mountains and views.