The other day I posted a picture of Emma laying on top of her house with her head hanging off it and last night I took a picture of a bunch of the dogs on the Varsity side of the kennel crashed either on or near theirs. Unfortunately the photo doesn’t do the scene justice, but take my word for it they all looked pretty comfy resting in the cool evening air.

Mark, Hercules and Roxy survived their second jog last night and again, it was Hercules coming back to the cabin jogging with Mark and Roxy walking behind him. Mark says by the end of the summer he’ll be jogging the whole way around and then some. (We’ll see).

Speaking of jogging, Carstenz and Zena have been doing laps around their respective puppy pens at feeding time. They both are starting to get pretty big around the middle, with Carstenz taking the widest rear end honors and Zena the widest belly. Either one of them could go anytime this weekend, but Zena’s last breeding was twelve days after her first so she could go as late as August 15th or so. We will know either one of them is getting close when they stop doing laps at feeding, we’ll keep you all posted!

Mother Nature blessed us with a 1/2 inch of rain yesterday (thank you Mother) and I didn’t jinx the summer-like weather with my post yesterday. In town, the rain stopped around 9:00, but according to Mark who was rained-out of work and sent home at 7:30 yesterday morning, it rained off and on at home until nearly 2:00.

We aren’t the only ones that like the summer-like weather. In the last week or so I swear the garden has doubled in size. I made the mistake of planting the peas in front of the beans and the peas are getting tall! According to the package, the were supposed to be “dwarf” and wouldn’t grow real tall and didn’t need much staking, but take a look at them. I had put a short fence behind them to grab on to, but they have grown so tall they are reaching for the anti-puppy fence. Both the peas and the beans are blooming like crazy, so hopefully the peas won’t hog all the sun so the beans will continue to grow. Next year, I’ll be sure to put the peas in the back row!

The other night we had our first harvest from the garden…lettuce for our taco salads. I only planted two small rows of lettuce and carrots so we’re going to have to start having more salads soon. The tomato plants in front of the garage are blooming like crazy and even have a couple of tomatoes starting to grow. I guess it’s time to put a cage around them too so the little chipmunks don’t eat them! Maybe this weekend. No rest for the wicked!

I hope I’m not jinxing the continuation of the beautiful weather we’ve been having for the last week or so, but it is finally feeling like summer. Yesterday it was a little “cooler by the lake” but it was still warm enough for me to work up a sweat on my three mile walk at lunchtime.

The dogs have been taking their time off in stride laying around and on top of their houses, digging holes and playing with their neighbors. Some of the dogs (like Emma in the photo) love to lay on their house while having their heading hanging off of it. If you ask me, it looks uncomfortable!

Last night Mark decided it was time to start getting into shape and took Roxy and Hercules for a short jog. Amazingly enough the dogs came back with Mark still in tow and I didn’t have to go looking for him with oxygen. We’ll see how long the “I have to get into shape” mode continues.

Hopefully Mother Nature will give us a little moisture as it is getting really dry in the dog yard. We’re trying not to run the generator too much these days with the gas prices as high as they are, but if she doesn’t give us some rain soon, we’ll have to or the cabin will be covered in two inches of dust soon. A few weeks ago we were asking for it to stop raining and now we’re asking for it. What a difference a couple of weeks can make.

I thought I would share a few more photos from the Dragon Boat Race on Saturday. Here we are, in our assigned seats getting ready to push off of the dock. Up front is Brenda Miller the drummer, whose job is to keep us all paddling in sync. Standing up in the back of the boat is Bob Baker our steersman. His job is to keep our boat going straight in our assigned lane during the races. It’s a harder job than most think especially on Saturday with winds of 10-20 miles and hour. One of the teams was disqualified from both of their heats because they crossed into the lane of another team and nearly hit them!

As mentioned yesterday, some of the team members started the morning out “Bloody”. Here’s Mark, Bob, Amanda and Jim enjoying their breakfast. Jim (AKA Heimey) enjoyed his a little more than anyone else.

In the mid-afternoon between our last two races Mark and Roxy took advantage of Bob having his sleeping pad laying out in the tent and took a power nap. I don’t know who enjoyed it more, Mark or Roxy.

Again, we had a great time on Saturday and if you ever get a chance to paddle in a dragon boat, do it. You will have a great time.

I’ve been having computer issues this morning so I apologize for this being posted so late. I’ve been working on downloading pictures for nearly two hours!

We had an absolute blast yesterday competing in the 5th Annual North Shore Dragon Boat Festival. We, Team Gunflint finished 2nd our division again. It was a windy, choppy day on the harbor in Grand Marais, but we paddled hard, played hard and had fun…that’s what it’s all about.

Our day started out meeting at the team tent at 10:00. Brenda, our official “fun shui”, Jim and Virginia brought along mixings and most of the team started the day a little “Bloody”. Our first race was at noon against the Freewest professional dragon boat racers of Thunder Bay and needless to say, they beat our time of 2 minutes and 16 seconds by 20 seconds. We shaved three seconds off our time in our second race against the Cook County class of 1978. We again were beaten out in that heat, but by a mere 2/10ths of a second. That heat had the closest race of the day and you could hear the spectators on the beach cheering for us all. I think we got the loudest applause of all the heats, including the finals, after that one.

While the combined times of our first two races weren’t fast enough to qualify us for the overall finals, they were fast enough to put us in the finals for our division. Our second race was at 3:00 and the finals for our division were at 4:00, a quick turnaround. In the division finals we were up against a crew from Hungry Jack Outfitters and another team from Bluefin Bay. We paddled hard and in the end it was the team from Hungry Jack taking first in the division. I guess it was kinda OK that they won since they too were a Gunflint Trail team. Our theory…while HJO had about two hours in-between races, we only had a 1/2 hour, so we figure that we didn’t have enough recovery time in-between. If we would have, Hungry Jack wouldn’t have won!

A special thanks to Bob Baker for asking us to paddle again this year and to Gail Anderson for being the official photographer for the team and sending along these photos so quickly. Thanks to Abby Prom for dogsitting Roxy while we were racing and especially to the rest of the team for being so much fun. After the races were done, a bunch of us went to the Birch Terrrace to get dinner and I don’t know if my stomach hurts today from soreness from the race or from laughing so hard at Jim and his impressions and Brenda and her “big stick”. Team Gunflint, you were a blast to paddle with and if they gave out an award for the team that had the most fun, we’d have the trophy! Cheers to you all and here’s to “paddles up” next year!