One Hour Closer To Cottage Season!

But man it's cold. It's so damn cold.

Last winter, I managed two overnight visits to Crow Lake. Just one this year and even that one was testing the boundaries of good sense.

There was a job I wanted to complete though. During an earlier winter visit (only for a couple of hours) Christine and I began removing some of the living room tiles in order to replace them with something awesome.

When I'd messed with those tiles during our last weekend there, they came up easily. That created an incorrect perception that the job would be fast and easy.

The reality was that I just happened to choose easy ones to try to lift. Turns out the central part of the other tiles and the floor were stuck together tighter than Sigfried and Roy. So only the edges of the tiles would come up and break off. You ended up with this situation for virtually every tile around the fireplace.

Come on, man...

This was unexpected because for the most part, the dining room floor had come up fairly easily last year. At times I could pop those off in bunches of four or six.

But not in the living room, baby! There I was pleased if I could snap off a six-inch chunk. It was baby steps the whole way.

And so an excuse for a winter trip emerged. Christine equipped me with all sorts of scrapers and hammers and what-not and off I went. It was a battle but I threw on some classic blues and (literally) chipped away at it.

No flooring is already an improvement on the atrocity that was previously laid down. I could live with it for a while except that it remains sticky in many places. When we've dropped by and there has been exposed flooring, we've been a little concerned that we're going to find a mouse that got stuck and died there. Or a chipmunk. Or a moose. Can you imagine arriving to that?

Ideally, I'd like to have the new floor done before opening up but weather seems to be dictating otherwise. If it's an opening weekend job, so be it.

In the meantime, I'm going to make up for lost time a bit with a few pictures from our summer vacation that haven't made it on here yet.

Truthfully, I wish I could post a boat load of pictures from when Chantal and Joseph visited in September but it was only upon their departure that we realized that not a single one of us took a single picture. It's been months and I still don't understand how that happened.

It was a great visit, too, even though it was hot as hell throughout most of it. Outdoor fires, port, cigars, a little time spent in the water...But not a single picture. Baffling.

Instead, I'll throw down a few shots from our (Christine and me) visit to the Scheurmann Winery in Westport in late summer. We had stopped there before but there was no activity in the place. It felt like we were trespassing.  We assumed that maybe they just hadn't fully opened for business yet so we took off.

They were clearly open this time around so we stopped in and were greeted by this dood and his timely cock-a-doodle-do.

Fun stop. I recall that Chris wasn't blown away by the Pinot Noir but I enjoyed my sparkling cider just fine. But I would stop in just for the rooster.

Oreo Cows and Crow Lake Wildlife

Moo?

These cows are not in the Crow Lake vicinity proper, but rather near a town called Franktown as we make our way out to the cottage.  We deduced, based on their unusual black-white-black pattern that these are the cows from which Oreo-dipping milk is drawn.

Chistine and I are on holidays.  We'd been at the cottage since Friday night and returned for one over-nighter today to take care of a few things (including a very important haircut for me).  We expect to head out again tomorrow late morning or early afternoon.

My folks popped by on Tuesday and stayed until this morning as well.  I spent my birthday making dinner (well, the main course, anyway) while drinking a glass of red wine and listening to Buddy Guy.  I'm not sure how I would have had it any different, but I'm damn sure I wouldn't have anticipated it a year ago.

My parents are coming again on Sunday, and Caroline and Asley will join us as well, so that should make for a nice night.  Since this week is still a work in progress, I'm going to share some of the pictures from past weeks that I didn't have the opportunity to use yet. Enjoy (hopefully)!

First, this guy:

I haven't been able to get a good shot of him (them) but that may be a blessing.  They are all over "Crow" Lake and look absolutely beautiful and majestic in flight.

And they look like hell up close.  Christine identified them as Turkey Vultures.  Ugh.  Think about it.  If I asked you to name the two ugliest birds on the planet, you would have probably chosen one, then the other.  This thing combines both.  Here's a closer look (not taken by me).

Oof.  That hurts my soul.  So let's flip that a bit.

Hummingbird!  They have been all over Christine's feeder of late.  I laid down on the deck and got that shot in about ten minutes. Caroline also got a good one, but because it may well make its way onto a wall inside the place, we'll wait until then to display it here.

Here's a fox we spotted while taking a walk on a side road.  He was way far so I couldn't get a great shot, unfortunately.

One actually scooted across the upper deck on the water side of the cottage earlier in the week.  That was a bit of a surprise.  We also saw one (my parents and I) during the drive to Westport on Wednesday morning.  Pretty cool.

We've also got turtles around...

...we saw a beaver doing its thing only once, but I was fortunate enough to be ready for him...

...and of course...

That one shows up an awful lot and constantly follows Christine around.  There is no lack of opportunity to take pictures of him.

I'm dying to get a good shot of a crow.  The one I thought would be terrific ended up blurry.  There are also raccoons around that I'd like to capture.  We'll see what happens this weekend.