Off The Beaten Path Weather Report, 4:15 a.m.: 50 degrees, 85% humidity, overcast, breezy.

Weather Underground Forecast:

Today
Windy. Mostly cloudy. A chance of rain showers in the morning…then a chance of rain and snow showers in the afternoon. Highs 45 to 50. Temperatures falling into the 30s in the afternoon. Northwest winds 20 to 30 mph. Chance of precipitation 50 percent.
Tonight
Windy. Mostly cloudy. A 20 percent chance of snow showers in the evening. Lows 23 to 28. Northwest winds 20 to 30 mph decreasing to 15 to 20 mph early in the morning. 

While the wind is howling outside my window right now, I thought you might get a howl out of a picture I received in an e-mail titled “Why Pets Hate Halloween”. What dog owner would do something like this to their dogs? If you ask me this is cruel and unusual punishment for man’s best friend (but it is funny).

I woke up to the thermometer reading 50 degrees, but by the looks of the forecast, it’s going to be changing soon. Every day the extended forecast is calling for a chance of rain and/or snow showers. I called Menard’s yesterday for the price of our materials list for our remaining building projects and as soon as I get back upstairs from my shower I will be calling them to get the order placed for delivery. We need to get the materials in before too much snow falls. We also have to get the dog truck out and back on the beaten path to it’s winter park spot before it gets snowed in. When I got home from work last night, Lis and John Neil were putting the doors back on so hopefully we can drive it out this weekend.

I got home too late last night to take the JV team out on their scheduled longer run, but Mark was on a run with the Varsity Team. He had left around 5:30 fully expecting the temperature to drop (as it was forecasted to) but by the time he got back it hadn’t dropped much and the dogs had a pretty warm run. He had to stop for about five minutes in a spot where the dogs could get into some water to cool down so we decided it would be best to lay the JV team off for another day instead of risking overheating someone. It sounds like we won’t be having to worry about the warmer temperatures for a while although on Monday night we were looking at our training log from last year and there were a couple of days in late November that had the comment in the mileage column “too hot and humid” to run. Hopefully that won’t happen this year and as soon as Mark gets laid off from work we can get the dogs on a regular rest/run schedule.

I just had to share one more “Why Pets Hate Halloween” picture.

Have a great “Howl”-a-Ween!

Off The Beaten Path Weather Report, 4:15 a.m.: 34 degrees, 81% humidity, mostly cloudy, calm winds.

Weather Underground Forecast:

Today
Partly cloudy. Highs 55 to 60. South winds 10 to 15 mph.
Tonight
Windy. A chance of showers in the evening…then showers likely after midnight. Lows 40 to 45. South winds 10 to 15 mph becoming southwest 15 to 25 mph after midnight…then becoming west 20 to 30 mph early in the morning. Chance of rain 70 percent. 

Sunday morning we had an unexpected visit. Around 8:45 the dogs were barking their “someone is coming” bark and after a minute or two fellow Grand Marais musher and Tom Lake area cabin owner, Neil Rassmussen, passed by our driveway with a dog team. A minute or so later the dogs went ballistic as Neil comes walking up our driveway with a cardboard box in hand. Mark and Roxy went out to meet him and chatted with Neil for only a quick moment as Neil had stopped his dog team just beyond our driveway, tied off his leaders and ran in with the package. It turns out Neil and his wife, Barb, are loyal Off The Beaten Path readers and Barb had made a gift for us…a polished and hand-painted piece of Lake Superior Basalt and a couple of Lake Superior agates. Barb must have remembered my previous posts about my admitted rock addiction. Click on the photo for a larger version and you can see that not only is Barb a great artist, but she also has a great sense of humor. I have the rock displayed behind my computer at home leaning against the window so I can have a chuckle every time I look at it while on-line. Thank you Barb and Neil, I love it! 

What is also an unexpected gift is all the people we have been hearing from that are also loyal Off The Beaten Path readers. As I mentioned in my post on Friday, I have heard from some of you over the course of the last sixteen months, but there are many more of you out there…way cool.  Thanks for the compliments and suggestions. I will try to fit the suggestions given into future postings. One of the suggestions is to have more photos of the dogs and I know I haven’t been taking many lately as we have been so busy working around the kennel that I forget to get the camera out. Also by the time I get home from work these days, it’s dark outside. I heard from Lis’s mom this morning and I bet she would love to see a photo of Lis running dogs so I will try to remember to bring the camera with on our dog runs.

Looking at the extended weather forecast, it looks like today is the last day of warm weather and there is a chance of snow tomorrow. We contacted our good friend and Duluth-area custom home builder, Karl Tarnowski, yesterday about our materials list for the construction projects that need to get underway SOON. We were hoping to have most of the construction wrapped up by now, but due to the delay in getting the well installed, we are now scrambling. Hopefully we will have another week or so of decent weather and Mark can get the mud sinkhole fixed so we can get the delivery truck in before it gets snowed out. Keep your fingers crossed for us as we have our other handler Nathan expected soon. After the building materials get delivered and Nathan gets his winter digs set up, then it can snow, snow, snow…but hopefully not until then.

Have a great Tuesday!

Off The Beaten Path Weather Report, 4:20 a.m.: 30 degrees, 85% humidity, partly cloudy, calm winds.

Weather Underground Forecast:

Today
Partly sunny. Highs 52 to 57. West winds 5 to 10 mph becoming southwest late in the afternoon.
Tonight
Partly cloudy. Lows 35 to 40. South winds 5 to 10 mph. 

We have a couple of Happy Birthday wishes to pass along. Happy Birthday to my sister Terry and her twin brother Tim aka Sherm. Yep guys, you are on the downhill slide to fifty! We also need to send along another special birthday wish to Mark’s grandma, Margaret Black. Grandma Black, Terry and Sherm, we hope you all have a great day.

Well, we did turn the computer on last night but I didn’t get a chance to post anything. Mark surfed the web and checked e-mail while I was cooking dinner and when he hit the send button we lost the internet connection and couldn’t reconnect. So Kent in Alaska, Mark tried to send you an e-mail last night. Hopefully tonight we will get home early enough and we won’t lose the connection.

It was only 4 1/2 months after I first called the well driller, but here is a picture of the well producing water for the first time. Yipee! It sure was nice on Saturday and Sunday filling buckets with a hose instead of hand-pumping. What used to take us close to a half hour to fill all the buckets now takes about 5-10 minutes. We did have a little scare as the generator that we use to charge our off-grid batteries when we don’t get enough sun is a 2000 watt Honda which isn’t big enough to power the pump. Fortunately last year we bought a used 4500 watt Homelite so hopefully it will keep running so we don’t have to go back to hand pumping. After somewhere around 800,000 pumps in four years, we don’t want to have to start counting again!

Saturday night we fed the dogs and had dinner early (while the sun was still out) and Mark, myself, Lis and John Neil packed into Mark’s truck and headed over to Tom Lake cabin owners, Steve and Mary Kay Fleace’s for a little socialization. The Fleace’s are closing up their cabin for the winter and Bruce and Cristy, The Rainmakers were spending their last night in the north woods until spring also  so we more than likely won’t be seeing them now until next spring. What was amazing is that Bruce and Cristy were up for the last week and I think it only rained once while they were up here!  

Today is a well-deserved day off for the the dogs after running four days in a row. The gravel roads are starting to take a toll on their pads and today we have Lis and John Neil “doctoring” feet. Yesterday afternoon we had the fun of harnessing Mac and Tini for the first time. I have to apologize for the quality of the photo, but I had to move quick as I thought Tucson was going to run me over! Anyway, in the photo Mac is on the right and Tini (who you can’t see thanks to Olive’s tail) is on the left. Mark said Mac did really good while Tini “ran along”. It’s their first time pulling in harness, so hopefully Tini will catch on quickly.

Have a great day and get out and enjoy the sunshine as it sounds like it’s going to be a beautiful day. Allison and I will be taking full advantage of the weather as we will be out in the field all day.

Happy Monday (and 47th birthday Terry and Sherm).

Off The Beaten Path Weather Report, 8:30 a.m.:  34 degrees, 85% humidity, clear skies, calm winds.

Weather Underground Forecast:

Today
Mostly sunny in the morning then becoming partly cloudy. Highs 50 to 55. Southwest winds 5 to 10 mph becoming northwest late in the afternoon.
Tonight
Breezy. Mostly cloudy. A slight chance of rain and snow in the evening…then a chance of rain and snow showers after midnight. Lows 33 to 38. North winds 15 to 25 mph. Chance of precipitation 20 percent. 

Oh it feels good to sleep in until 8:00! Although I do remember the days when getting up early meant 8:00. We had the chance to sleep in since the well drillers are expected back here anytime and we didn’t want to run into their big truck while running dogs as there isn’t enough room to head-on pass them. Hopefully they will show as promised and we can fill buckets with a hose tonight instead of hand pumping! When we thought they were going to be here in August I said as soon as I could I was going to run through the sprinkler…looking at the forecast I don’t know if I feel like running through a sprinkler in the snow. Brrrrrrrr.

Mark and John Neil took the JV team on a run before I got home last night and then Mark turned around with the Varsity Team for their run. The time off did the dogs good as they said everyone ran great. We will take all three teams out later this afternoon, get the dogs fed and make sure we are back in the cabin by 7:00 for our weekly excitement of trivia on WTIP. Last week Lis and John Neil had a blast and are looking forward to it again. Yep, they’ve been living Off The Beaten Path for a while…simple life, simple pleasures.

Ok, Mark has been bugging me to post this for a while. He thinks there aren’t that many people out there on the web that are regular Off The Beaten Path readers. So, we’d like to hear from you. You can e-mail us directly at info@blackmagickennels.com or you can register to be an Off The Beaten Path member by clicking on “log in” under the register heading on the right column of the screen. I have heard from a few of you at different times, so let me hear from you again. Also, let us know what you like about it and/or what you would like to see on the blog.

Get out and enjoy the sunshine today if you can. It sure has been nice to be rain free for a couple of days. Have a great weekend and if I don’t sleep in too late tomorrow or Sunday, you might hear from me.

Off The Beaten Path Weather Report, 4:30 a.m.: 30 degrees, 80% humidity, mostly clear skies, calm winds but breezy along Lake Superior.

Weather Underground Forecast:

Today
Mostly sunny. Highs 52 to 57. Southwest winds 10 to 20 mph.
Tonight
Mostly clear. Lows 30 to 35. Southwest winds 10 to 15 mph.

When I came upstairs from my shower I saw a sliver of red peeking out from underneath from one of the exterior doors here at work. When I opened the door, this is what I saw and thought I should share it.

We need to say a special thank you to the gang at Superior Lumber and Sports in Grand Marais. They are letting us keep the 65 bales of straw that was delivered yesterday in one of their stalls since we couldn’t get everything we had ordered from the feed store home in one trip. As it was last night, Mark’s truck hauled home 15-50 lb. flats of frozen chicken and fat and 15-40 lb. bags of dog food. Those of you that know Mark’s “Redneck” truck know that hauling 1,350 lbs. in the bed of it is a lot to ask. I had the remaining nine bags of food in my truck. It was a slow drive on the bumpy, rocky roads of Off The Beaten Path but we made it. Whew!

We have given the dogs a couple of days off due to the fact that they have lost so much weight in the last couple of weeks. We thought we were the only ones until I ran into local musher, Matt Groth, yesterday and he is having the same problem. Fall is always a tough time to keep weight on the dogs as the temperatures get cooler and the dogs don’t have their winter coats yet. This year they have lost more weight than normal and in talking with Matt we deduced that all the cold puddles we are running through has something to do with it. Last year at this time it wasn’t nearly as wet on the trails and Mark had already been laid off from work so while we were running through water last year, the bulk of the runs were in the morning and the dogs had all day to lay in the sun to dry out. This year most of the runs have been at night and they haven’t had the sun to dry them out. Except for a couple of days this month, they never had a chance to dry out at all. Now that we can keep the meat from spoiling, we have extra fat and chicken to supplement their feedings with.

With the clear weather yesterday, John Neil and Lis spent the day working on getting the dog box ready for painting. They replaced a couple of spots where the plywood was starting to rot and have been sanding, sanding, sanding. Hopefully this weekend the weather will hold and we can get it painted and put back together. The well drillers are supposed to be back on Friday to intall the pump and Saturday Mark is bringing home a dump truck load or two of crushed shale to fix the mud sink hole in our road. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that the shale will give the spot a base so we can drive across it again and get the dog truck down the hill to the plowed road. I’ll feel a little more at ease once that happens.

If you can, get out and enjoy the sunshine that’s in the forecast!