Life in the Frozen Tundra



Brrrrrr……Life is cold on the frozen tundra! I would not be surprised if we ran across the film crew from the discovery channel filming Alaska Wild. The days have been in the 40’s-50’s and the nights in the upper 20’s to upper 30’s but being parked next to a huge ice cube with the wind blowing all that cold air on you it is hard to keep the chill off. The ice is starting to get real dark which means it is about to turn, I am guessing another 3-5 days and we will be ice free. We can hear the loons calling but they cannot settle on these lakes yet, they must be staging up on some smaller ponds or rivers that are already open.

Pasha Lake on Monday

Thursday, it is getting there!

We have been working on our site prep. Chad, the owner of Pasha Lake, cleared out some trees at the end of a peninsula to create an awesome spot for us. He had 50 amp service brought down and is in the process of getting water here. For any other RV’ers who are traveling up this way, he also installed power and water for 4 other sites right along the water. Barb and I have been busy clearing brush along the shoreline to open up our view a little bit while some of the other guys have been leveling our site with a backhoe. Barb had an incident with a branch clipper today, somehow the pinky finger on her right hand got a little too close to the branch she was clipping off and she nearly took off her finger! Talk about blood, she left a trail of blood from the site to the trailer. She waited outside the trailer while I went in and got the medical supplies needed. Some hydrogen peroxide, antibiotic ointment, three bandaids and some vet wrap and she was as good as new. Barb drove the rig into our site late Tuesday afternoon and now we have our home for the next few months. We still have work to do to get it where we want it but we have plenty of time.

Preparing our site

We went for a drive this Wednesday afternoon to Tyrel Lake which is about 20 kilometers from camp up highway 801. Although it is classified as a highway, 801 is strictly a gravel road where you can go about 45 mph. This time of year there are a lot of potholes and several spots where rivers and streams have flooded the road. Tyrel Lake is about 5 miles down an old logging/mining road off the 801. It takes about ½ an hour to drive that 5 miles as the road is pretty rough. Last year the beavers had built a dam across the road making the lake inaccessible for most of the year. While we were driving in this year we saw that dam is gone but they built another one just up the road from it. Fortunately they built the dam on the side of the road that still allowed us to get by. The dam itself is holding the water level about 3-4 feet higher than the road so when you drive by you are almost at eye level with the water. You just have to hope the dam does not give way right when you are driving by! Along the lake there is an old mining camp with several racks of cores from test drillings. The miners analyze and categorize each sample so they know exactly where it came from. Life must have been a little lonely for these miners back in the day. Barb and I have fished this lake several times in the past few years and it hold a nice walleye and northern population. Last spring we were able to sight fish northerns in a shallow bay which was a lot of fun, we are hoping to repeat that as soon as the ice gets off.

Beaver Dam Next to the Road

 

Ruffed Grouse

Moose Tracks

Core Drilling racks with old camp tent on left

Close up of cores

Saturday, Sunday and Monday were filled with fishing adventures. Saturday I went to Jackson Lake with a father and son from the Twin Cities (Minnesota). This lake is about 60 kilometers (~36 miles) from Pasha. This is one of the more remote lakes as you have to walk about ¾ of a mile through a marshy woods to get to the lake. Since we were the first ones on the lake for the year we had to take two motors out there for the boats which were stored in the woods for the winter. Most of the ice was off the lake, we only had to break through about 100 yard stretch to get to our fishing spot. It snowed most of the day and fishing was very slow. We only caught two fish, one walleye and one northern.

Sunday I went out to Northwind Lake with a group of 7 from West Virginia. Again, being the first ones on this lake we had to bring three boats, motors and all the equipment to the lake. Northwind is located on a river system so you launch the boat in the river and wind your way about ¼ mile to the lake. All went well on the river but when we got to the lake all we saw about ½ mile of ice with open water beyond. The ice was about 2-4 inches and I was able to break our way through to the open water to do some fishing. This group had never “ice fished” before and I could see the apprehension on their faces. We dodged floating sheets of ice throughout the day and endured a rather windy day. Again fishing was slow but we had a great time we ended up with 2 fish for the day.  Throughout the day I noticed the wind was picking up and blowing towards the end of the lake that we needed to get to in order to get our boats to the launch. Sure enough when we got back to that end of the lake much of the ice had been blown down there as well covering the entrance to the river. The other two boats held back while I tried to ram my way through the ice to the mouth of the river but the closer I got the more the ice was stacked up. Eventually we gave up and ended up beaching the boats in a bay that was protected from the wind/ice and walked about ½ mile to our vehicles. The boats are still there, we will need to go back in the next couple days to retrieve them.

Crushin Ice

I see open water!

Finally, open water!

32" Pike

Monday I went with two of the people from West Virginia to Bearskin Lake in search of monster northern pike. This is a 4 wheeler only access lake about 5 miles from Pasha, so with boat in tow we set off with high hopes! 2 miles of gravel road and 3 miles of an old logging road we arrived at the lake to see……..ice! The bay where we launch the boat was totally covered in ice. I can see open water in the distance and the ice looks soft and thin, so we launch the boat and head straight into the ice filled bay. We crushed ice for about 100 yard and it just kept getting thicker and thicker to the point where the boat would just not break through any more. Using our same trail in I backed the boat out and went the long way around the bay to see if we could get to the open water. Luckily the ice along the edges was much thinner and although the trip was noisy (like being inside a huge margarita maker) we eventually made it to the open water. Once in open water we had to dodge a few sheets of ice but we were fishing! We went to the shallow bays where the water should be warmer and the pike should be hanging out. The water was very clear and we could see fish in the shallows, they would follow the lures but did not cooperate with a strike! We would cast on them, over them and around them but they were not biting! Eventually we gave up on those fish and I trolled the boat along the edges, Matt was the first one to get action with a nice 32”’er which put up a nice fight. Brie was the next one to get a hit topping Matt’s by 2” with a 34”’er. Not to be outdone, Matt answered with a really nice 36”’er. For the day we ended up with 7 fish for the day all of them nice sized pike. Matt and Brie had a great time and have caught the two largest fish of their group so far! Luckily it was a very nice day so by the time we got back to the bay where the launch was, most of the ice was gone and we had no trouble getting out. When we arrived back to Pasha Lake we saw that all the ice was not gone and we can get out there and see about some of those lake trout.

Chad had taken out the rest of the West Virginia group, they had an awesome day with over 30 fish landed. The biggest walleye was a 22"'er caught by Steven the day before his 12th birthday!

The next two days call for rain so it might be a good few days to organize the trailer and go see about those boats we left on Northwind!

Back in MN/WI!!!!

Being back in our “home” area has been a little surreal. In some respects, it does not seem like we have been gone two months, in others it seems like we have been gone much longer. It has been great to catch up with family and friends. Saturday we went to the house we rented in Menomonie to get our Jeep and pick up a few totes and things we had stored there the past few months. OMG, we have more stuff to get rid of! There must have been 6 totes there and more “stuff” I (most of it was mine) could not live without. We loaded up as much as we could and I went to pick up my 4 wheeler at a friend’s house.

Sunday we got together with my family, brothers, sisters, brother in law and a nephew. Although we may have seen each other individually throughout the year, we have not been together has a group in a year or more. Of my brothers and sisters, all of us retired within the past several years with the exception of the youngest. My sister Carol had retired but went back to help them out on a temporary basis and they talked her into staying a little longer and my brother Bob took on a part time job as he was not ready to totally pull the plug yet. 

We had not seen our nephew Marshall in several years. At 27, he has been traveling throughout the world the past couple of years. I know I am going to get this wrong but I think he has spent time in Brazil, Japan and China as well as a few others. While in Japan he met Claire who was from Paris. They married a few weeks ago and this was our first opportunity to meet her. She is a very nice and interesting person and it was fun to hear her thoughts and experiences from her first trip to the U.S.
During the week I spent time with my brother Bob doing yard work. Would you believe I actually miss having projects and doing stuff like that?!?!? We put some lawn edging and rock along the house and buried a couple of drain pipes. Meanwhile Barb went to work. Hey, someone needs to make some money around here! She helped out for the week before we head to Canada. She said it was great to see her friends, she does not miss some of the stress that comes with any job but she does miss the daily interaction with her friends/co-workers. One of her most frequently asked questions is “Don’t you get tired of being with each other 24/7?”  I am not sure how she answers that when I am not around but we both agree that is far from the case with us.  

Saturday we moved the trailer over to our good friends in the Spring Valley Wisconsin area. Greg and Gloria Anderson own a farm in that area and also own the lake home we rented for the winter. Sunday morning I went over to the lake house and loaded up our canoe while Barb went to the grocery store to stock up for Canada. One thing we will definitely miss is accessibility to a good grocery store. When we get there the closet grocery store is about an hour away. The prices are very high and the perishables leave something to be desired.  That afternoon we had crashed the Mother’s Day celebration with Gloria’s 5 children. All of them live within 30 minutes of their parents and I am always impressed at how well they all get along. The three girls are always doing things together and talk CONSTANTLY about horses while their boyfriends/spouses do things together each week as well. They are really a great group of people.

Sunday afternoon it was time to hit the road and head to Canada so we load up our gypsy caravan and headed north and head to Pasha Lake Cabins for some fishing! It is mid-May, the ice should be off the lakes by now right? Wrong! We get to the Duluth/Superior area and see ice! Well, maybe this is just an anomaly and we won’t see any more. Wrong! We spent the night in Grand Marais. We generally just park in the city marina and sleep for the night and get up early and hit the road. When we arrived in the marina there were 8-10 cars there with a bunch of teenagers on the dock. Barb, Daisy and I went over to investigate. As we approached, three of the boys jumped in the water and screamed like little school girls! They were doing the cold water plunge challenge which is a trend on Facebook right now. They ran for their trucks to warm up and the group quickly dispersed. Later that night while in bed Barb and I heard this horrible scrapping noise getting closer and closer. We look out the window to something I don’t thing I will ever forget. Going by our bedroom window we see a car drive by dragging a guy on a pump exercise bike with sparks flying everywhere. There we were, 11:00 at night looking out our bedroom window seeing this kid pumping up and down on this bike. We were laughing our @sses off! They left for a few minutes then here they come again, this time we look out and there are two kids riding tandem on the bike, sparks just a fly’in. Barb and I commented that that was something we would have done as kids too and settled back in bed. The scraping went on for about 30 minutes then all was quite. When we woke up in the morning, there next to our jeep…..yup, it was an exercise bike!

Ship coming in through the ice

 

Lake Superior outside of Duluth

 

 

Our overnight spot in Grand Marais

 

View north from the Grand Marais Marina

We hit the road and crossed the border into Canada without a problem arriving at Pasha Lake only to see…….ice! Every lake in the area still has 1-3 feet of ice on it. Fishing opens in a few days and there is no way the ice is going to be off the lake. Some groups are already canceling while some others are going to tough it out and fish some of the open rivers.

Pasha Lake still ready for ice fishing!

The next few days will be spent getting our RV site ready so we can settle in for the summer!

 

 

 

Turkey-less in South Dakota

Click pictures to enlarge

We arrived in Wood, South Dakota on Saturday, April 26^th. Wood is located on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in the central part of the state about 30 minutes south of Murdo. The area itself is flat and dry primarily used for raising cattle and hay. At first glance you would not think there would be any wildlife in such a desolate area but on closer inspection you can see that the landscape is lined with drainages and dry creek beds. Here is where you will find pretty much the only trees in the area and most of the wildlife. Both whitetail and mule deer inhabit these drainages as well as coyotes, bobcats, antelope and of course turkeys. Both Merriam and Eastern turkeys are in the area and what the locals call “dirty birds” which are a cross between the two.

We were able to get out hunting for a few hours Saturday afternoon. Barb, Daisy and I loaded up the 4 wheeler and headed out to one of my tried and true areas I have had success in the past. We set up the blind, some decoys and sat and waited. Daisy got to come turkey hunting as it is too soon for her to be left alone after her surgery. While turkeys have amazing eyesight and hearing, they cannot smell at all. So as long as we stay in our blind and keep Daisy quiet we have a pretty good chance to seeing some birds and try to call them within bow range.  Unfortunately the turkeys had other plans and did not show up to the party that afternoon. We got up at 5am the next morning and tried the same spot, although we heard a few gobble in the distance, they did not respond to our calls. 

 

Certainly not the weather we were hoping for!

The weather turned to rain early Sunday afternoon so Barb and Daisy stayed in the trailer and although I saw a few birds, none came in close.  Two from our group did manage to bag a couple of birds so at least we know they are out there! If you have never experienced South Dakota mud in the rain and the snow in this area you are in for a treat. The “gravel” roads get so slick with the mud that they will often delay or cancel school! It is much like driving on ice where you have absolutely no control of your vehicle. Monday continued to rain and turned to snow so everyone stayed in camp and watched movies for the day. Tuesday the snow continued most of the day and the wind continued with 25-35mph sustained winds with gusts higher than that. Although some of us did get out it was very difficult hunting. Barb and Daisy decided that turkey hunting in the cold and wind was for the birds and stayed at the trailer. Spring is mating season for turkeys, hens laying as many as 15 eggs in their nests. When the weather is warm the hens will cluck and call to potential suitors while toms will goggle and run around looking for hens and other toms to fight with. However, when it is cold, hens get crabby and lose their desire to get frisky. They will not mate or nest when it is below 45 , as a result the toms are very hard to hunt. They seem to know any hen that is out there calling and looking for company is nuts, as a result when they see our decoys or hear our come-hither calls they tend to go the other way. Who wants to deal with a crazy hen?!?! By the end of the week the shotgun hunters within the group had taken 8 birds. In addition to me there were 2 other archery hunters, we got skunked.

 If you ever find yourself crossing South Dakota on Hwy 44, stop by for fuel and a meal at the D&E Service Station in Wood. Dave and Eileen are very nice people and Eileen is an awesome cook!

Thursday afternoon we packed up and headed to Minnesota to visit friends and family. We arrived late Thursday night and are currently “mooch docking” at my brother Bob’s house in Taylors Falls. For those of you unfamiliar with that term, mooch docking is kinda like boon docking but we are “mooching” space in their yard, hooked up to their water and power. We will be here for about a week where Barb is going to work for a few days while I get things ready for our 4 months at Pasha Lake Cabins in Ontario. I talked to Chad, the owner of Lake, who said the ice is not off the lakes yet but it should be off in time for fishing opener next week!


Mooch docking at my brothers house

We did not take a lot of pictures this week so I am including some pictures from earlier that did not make previous posts.

Barb fishing Ditch Creek in SD

A couple of brook trout hiding under a log

White-faced Ibis in Utah

Western Grebe in Utah

 

Black Necked Stilt in Utah



Avocet in Utah
 

The Black Hills Experience

A quick 8 hour drive on Monday followed by another 4 on Tuesday and we arrived at Heritage Village RV Park in Custer South Dakota. We spent Monday night at the Walmart in Casper Wyoming arriving at about 7pm. We had not had dinner yet and were craving a “home cooked” meal so Barb went into Walmart in search of a rotisserie chicken, mashed potatoes and another yummy salad Barb was going to find. She returned about 20 minutes later with nothing but a terrified look on her face. She said this was by far the scariest Walmart she had ever been in! She said not only were the salads were crusty and disgusting, the employees behind the counter were equally as scary! She was not going buy anything prepared behind that counter. After a quick pep talk and some encouragement, she went in for another round, we ended up with a couple of Zatarrin frozen dinners “home cooked” in our microwave. They were actually quite good.

We arrived at Heritage Village RV Park about noon on Tuesday. It is located very close to Crazy Horse monument, in fact if you look very closely at the picture of our rig below you can see the monument above the satellite dish. We had chosen this RV Park as some fellow full-timers and bloggers Steve and Joan who are going to be working at the Crazy Horse Monument this summer  were staying here as well. I had read on their blog they were going to be in the area and I emailed Joan to see where they were going to be staying. When we pulled in next to them I don’t know if they were happy to have visitors or thought we were stalking them!  Barb and I have been following their blog for a few months and found that they could not have been nicer. We had a lot in common with them and really enjoyed the couple of hours we spent visiting and sharing experiences. I was happy to see that they were still there the next morning had not pulled up stakes and run for the hills during the night! They have been on the road for about 3 years and it was fun to compare notes and laugh about our lifestyle and some of the mistakes we make along the way. One that we laughed about is the amount of clothing we have (or lack of) and how in many of the pictures you see much of the same clothes over and over again. Many full-timers only have 7-10 sets of clothes to save room so there is not a lot of options from day to day. Yes, they are washed regularly (well, somewhat regularly) but you do tend to wear the same thing week after week.



 

 

Joan and Steve

Having a full hookup RV site was nice as we have not had one for a while. We could use electricity and water without having to worry about how much water we had or if the sun was shining to recharge the solar. They also have separate shower facilities so we got to take showers every day!

It has been one week since Daisy’s surgery and she is recovering well. What? You say I never mentioned her surgery before? Well, since we lost Bailey, Daisy has been a little more needy and barky. She was content being left alone with Bailey in the trailer or truck but now, not so much. She is slowing adjusting to being alone and is getting better but we decided to get her de-barked. The last thing fellow campers want to hear is a dog barking in the trailer next door. She went in for the procedure last Tuesday and she is not supposed to be left alone and kept quiet for two weeks. So once fully healed, if she does bark, it will be a soft whisper bark instead of the loud annoying bark.

We spent a cold and rainy Wednesday driving around exploring various trout streams and potential campsites. Most of the trout streams in the area are very small and you could jump across them in most spots. We walked a few of the stream/creeks and did see some trout but most of them were no more than 7-8”, hopefully the bigger ones are hiding in some deeper holes. We bought licenses…now that we are residents they are much cheaper and we got the combo hunting/fishing in anticipation of next fall. We are going to move campsites and hit the streams. We found an awesome US Forest Service Campground that had about 15 sites with nobody there at all! Granted, we had to drive snow covered gravel roads to find it but we will have it all to ourselves. We visited about 5 US Forest Service Campgrounds today, none of them had anyone in them due to it being so early. We found 3 we could get the rig into, two that we would stay but one of them was closed “due to lack of funding”. In the end the one we are staying at is the one we would have picked out of them all anyway.

Thursday and Friday were spent in solitude at the Ditch Creek Campground 14 miles outside Hill City and very close to Mountain Meadows campground where we have stayed both horse camping and turkey hunting in the past. We spent two days relaxing and fishing. The fishing was fantastic, we caught countless brook trout and rainbows. They were hitting a red worm imitation flies. I got a chance to try out me new GoPro video camera and took some videos catching and releasing some fish. The camera is waterproof so I got some nice shots of a couple trout as they were swimming away after we released them. 

Ditch Creek

A Rainbow being released into the stream

This picture is for you Steve!

 We cook several of the larger ones (15”+) over the open fire both nights for dinner. After dinner it was time to pack up so we could hit the road bright and early and head east to Wood South Dakota where we are to meet some friends from Wisconsin!

Happy Easter!

We had a great day with the kids on Easter over at Jessica and Shane’s house. Forrest and Somer went to Brighton snowboarding in the morning as it was the last day the slopes were going to be open. They met us later in the day for a dinner prepared by Jessica and Barb topped off by raspberry dessert!

We had an Easter egg hunt in the backyard where Dylan and Lily found plastic candy filled eggs and a couple of toys. Lily was running around finding eggs but once she discovered there was candy in them she would stop to eat the contents before looking for another. Dylan on the other hand was interested in quantity. I was impressed however when he stopped what he was doing and got Lily back on track by helping her fill her basket.

 

After dinner we got together for our very first family picture. Trying to get a 4 and 2 year old to stand for pictures is like trying to herd cats. It makes me wonder how my mom handled 7 children! Dylan and Lily should be shifted a little to the left in front of their respective parents but with only a 10 second delay on the camera timer we were not going to mess with fate.  After pictures we said our goodbyes, we should be back in 6 months. It was a good visit here in and we will miss seeing everyone but it is time to move on. Speaking of missing people, this is the first Easter in quite some time that we did not have Easter with some of my brothers and sisters, we missed them as well.

Today we start our journey to South Dakota to meet some friends for a bow hunt for the wiley South Dakota turkey. We will likely spend the night in Casper, stop in Custer for a few days before meeting our group in Wood, SD on Saturday.

Weekend in Moab

Our son Forrest and his wife Somer had been planning a camping trip for this weekend and we decided to tag along for an additional adventure. They had originally planned on camping in the Bryce Canyon area. After doing a little research we found that very few trails in this area were dog friendly so we found a kennel to take Daisy for the weekend and prepared to hit the road early Saturday morning. The kennel we had found was about 30 miles outside Bryce and would pick up and return your dog each day so they do not need to spend the night in the kennel. Friday arrived and a quick check of the weather showed snow and temps in the 20’s in the Bryce area so we did some quick research and found the Moab area was not only going to be much warmer but there are many dog friendly areas as well.

Forrest, Somer, Lily and Jack at Corona Arch

The drive to Moab south on 15, then east on 6 was absolutely beautiful. We past through Soldier  Summit in the Price area where there was still a lot of snow in the area. We had several sightings of elk, mule deer and antelope along the way. We went east on 70 for a while then 30 miles south on 191 where we pulled over and waited for Forrest and Somer. We left Salt Lake about an hour before them knowing we were going to be much slower. Many of the state campsites in the area are first come first serve with no reservations so we left Barb and the rig in a wayside in Moab and I jumped in with Forrest and went in search of an empty campsite that would fit our rig. We struck out at the first two campgrounds, there were a few open sites but none big enough for our rig. We struck gold at campground

#3 which was Big Bend Campground. There are 3 sites in this campground that we would fit in, all three were taken but it looked like one was packing up. A few minutes later the site was open and we pulled Forrest’s truck in and I called Barb telling her to head on up. It was a tight fit but Barb backed it in like a pro! I am still impressed with the number of friendly people we run into. One guy offered to move his jeep while Barb was backing up and another offered to let us park our truck in his site when we unhooked.

 

Big Bend is right on the Colorado River and our site had a little sandy area right on the water. Saturday we spent in the campground playing and relaxing. Forrest cooked a huge tri-tip sirloin on the fire topped off with a few smores before bed. Sunday we woke up to rain and it stuck around pretty much all day. We went for a drive and explored a few more campgrounds and hiked one area when the rain paused. We spent the afternoon relaxing in the trailer listening to the rain and watching The Masters golf tournament. Barb braved the elements and went out and started a fire, our plan was to cook hobo dinners on the fire. For those who have never had a hobo dinner it is basically a mix of meats and vegetables wrapped in aluminum foil and cooked in the coals of the fire. Ours consisted of burger, chicken sausages, potatoes, onions and carrots. 20 minutes in the coals and they were ready. There is something about cooking on a campfire that makes everything good!

That night the rain stopped but the cold set in, when we woke up in the morning there was ice on the puddles, the slideout awnings and anywhere the rain had pooled. Forrest, Somer and Lily toughed it out and spent the whole night in their tent. After packing up camp it had warmed up nicely and we headed to one of the dog friendly trails on the Corona Arch Trail. It is about 2 miles each way with moderate climbing. There were a couple of where the climb is steep but overall it is pretty easy. The terrain in the area is absolutely amazing! Buttes, arches, wind and rain holes or just the color of the terrain in incredible. It is amazing that anything can live in this area and obvious that it is a tough existence for both plants and animals.

Corona Arch

 

Even Pikachu made an appearance!

Despite the weather, it was a great weekend. The short time we spent there was not nearly enough and we are definitely going to come back and stay longer. When we arrived back on the Lindon Marina on Monday afternoon we found that we had missed one heck of a storm with reported winds over 60 miles per hour! This week we are looking forward to spending more time with the kids, planning our route to South Dakota and ending the week with the first Easter where we were all able to get together in probably 10 years!