Nothing says "fun at the beach" like a polka in northern Minnesota.   This is my dad playing the song that I remember most as a child growing up, the Tick Tock Polka.  I was always fascinated at how loud his accordion was back then, and like comfort food, that particular polka is very meaningful to me.

My Dad learned how to play while still a 12 year old kid and I remember the story of how when he was in the army in Korea, some of the brass found out that he could play and they miraculously dug up an accordion for him.

In this video of 2015 he's now 83 years old.  So, for as long as Northwind Lodge (Jasper Lake Resort) has formally been a resort in Lake County, my dad has been playing his accordion.

That's a lot of history at this Minnesota resort.
 

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Painting Dogs in Northern Minnesota

July 5th and another laid back day at Northwind Lodge.  Looks like I'm heading backing to my former life of painting.  I kind of missed it, actually.  It's nice to be back in familiar waters once again.  

Spectacular weather, beautiful days. good fishing and a little bit of paint.  How come you aren't here?

Click Here to see the finished painting of Delilah & Cookie

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Chair #2 for Incredible Ely is finished - Fire!

Chair #2 for the Charish Fundraiser Auction by Incredible Ely is done.  In some ways it was easier and harder than Chair #1 the moose, but I was happy with the end result.  I've noticed that people react differently to different scenes (well, duh) - what I mean is that it is interesting to watch them.  People focused on the eyes of an animal and stay there.  They look at the other parts, too, but the eyes are the center of concentration.  

Scenery with different aspects in the picture, require more time to study it (duh, again), but they focus on the fire and then move around the scene for several long seconds.  The surprise for me was noting that even a painted campfire draws in humans, particularly those who like the outdoors.  A campfire is like a magnet whether real or depicted.

I think that attraction goes back millennia as the fire is where the warmth, food and light were and remain today.  It's in grained into the instincts of humans.  When in trouble or having fun, a fire is a source of comfort and protection.  Hence the reason for the long observances by several people in the store here while I was painting.

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Painting Chairs for Incredible Ely

It was a really slow Sunday at Northwind Lodge today, so with a never ending list of things to do, I got caught up on an Adirondack chair painting that I was doing for Chairish, Incredible Ely's fundraiser.  I shot some video while I was working on it.  I still have a ways to go, but it's starting to turn out, OK.   These are pretty nice chairs built out of cedar buy the shop class at the Ely Highschool.  Rob Simonich is the teacher and he's doing a pretty good job with these kids who build all of these chairs.

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A Landing Net's Life

My dad turned 83 years old yesterday and just to make the younger world feel diminished, I dragged him all the way down the Wood Lake portage and forced him to catch fish on Wood Lake for the day. The portage is 210 rods long or .58 miles long and it was muddy and rugged after yesterday’s heavy rains which is par for the course on portages. For an old guy with a fake knee and a double bypass some 15 years ago, he does pretty well. Of course, I brought along my sidekick Delilah.

Once we hit the trail, she began her Wood Lake portage routine of blasting ahead at full speed, turning off the trail into the woods and running parallel back along the trail only to come out behind me. From that point, she snorts past me again, tongue flopping and nothing but a blurry streak of fur to do it repeatedly for the entire trail. I figure that she runs about three times the length of the trail every time we walk it. In the back of my mind, I’m waiting for the moment she drives out a momma bear and cubs to meet me, but that hasn’t occurred….yet.

As I walked the trail carrying my oars, our rods and my pack, I noted the fresh tracks in the mud – two people ahead of me. As a boy, I was trained to not leave tracks – not in the figurative sense connected to symbolically saving the BWCA, but instead, for real. Hunting and trapping as a kid, we never wanted to be followed and the best way to avoid followers is to never leave tracks as best we could and we still do this to this day. As a result, I observe this telltale “flaw” in others all the time and today’s tracks in front of me were no different. I could tell both were men, in their late 30’s to early 40’s, weighing about 185 lbs. each. They wore big floppy hats, mosquito head nets, blue, white and black, paddling gloves, and brand new long sleeve, nylon button-down shirts with brand new nylon, zip off pants. 

As Delilah blasted silently down the portage, about 150 feet in front of me, up a hill and around a curve, I heard her let loose with the most ferocious, attack-dog bark her nine pound body could muster! First I thought ” bear” but that was immediately corrected. There was a scream and panic as a voice-in-terror yelled, “Gggaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh! GET OUTTA HERE! GO AWAY!!!! ” as Delilah stopped them in their tracks. I tried to call her off, but she was unrelenting, so I picked up my pace to see two guys decked out in nylon shirts, zip-off pants, trail boots, blue-white-black paddling gloves, big hats and bug nets. Delilah finally shut up as her job was done attacking the space aliens. I chuckled and said when they passed, “I bet that scared the crap out of you!” to which one replied “Maybe a little…” Delilah looked back at me all proud and alert for taking down the “aliens” with a good, solid whoopin’. Then, she blasted down the portage once again. 

When we hit the water, we endured a beautiful day with moderate catching but enough to keep up busy all day long.   In a pretty true test, we found that live bait and artificial lures ended up producing about “neck and neck” . There was no real, obvious gain in using live bait over lures. Later in the day, the wind picked up and screamed from the west making for about 1.5 hours of tough rowing with a significant chop and some whitecaps.  I put together this video called “A Landing Net’s Life” since the I had the camera stuck to the net. 

Upon returning to the parking because not much wears Delilah out, she took off and chased a 70 foot long semi roaring past on the Fernberg Road. The present road crew tried to catch her but she blew past them, returning to me and prompting a parking lot visit by a concerned, but laughing foreman looking for “a little brown dog that was chasing one of their semi’s down the new asphalt.” Delilah stood up on the truck seat and smiled at him. 

Good dog, Delilah. Never give up.

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A New Ceiling for Rental Cabin #3

Last fall, we needed to put a new roof on Cabin #3.  That cabin was there since the 40's and as a kid, my brother Bernie and I put at least two new roofs on it years ago after our dad had done the same prior to that.  It finally developed a leak and I patched it but the whole roof was shot.  I decided to insulate it and put a layer of osb sheeting over the top.  Curt and I did that last fall.

I discovered that there were five layers of rolled roofing on that cabin!  The roof itself was simply made out of ship lap pine and that also made the inside of the ceiling which had turned that really dark brown like old, varnished pine usually does.  While walking around on the roof on 66 year old boards we were careful to make our feet bridge two boards while walking to prevent cracking or even going through an individual plank.  I'm always amazed that lumber from 66 years ago still even has structural integrity.  The boards were still springy and after a ton of running around, not one even cracked a little.  I don't think any type of plastic would have held up the same.

I installed a simple framework, laid down the foam insulation, nailed down half inch sheeting and roof edging that I had to build for this job and put the felt layer on along with the shingles.

Upon inspection of the inside, I could see where some of the nails we shot down in the framing became an issue and I decided to put in a new ceiling in the spring.  Well, spring sprang and in between rain, snow and bad weather, I videoed a condensed version of that particular job along with the end result.  It turned out OK.

While I was sitting in Cabin 3 tuning my radio I happened to look outside the window at the spectacular view of blue water on Jasper with a backdrop of wilderness while an eagle soared overhead and one of our loons protested in the distance.  I said to myself, "yeah, I could live here for a week or two!"

It's a pretty cool place.

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Sucker Spawning in Jasper Creek

It was Sucker Fest at Northwind Lodge on May 5th and for about two days.  I was working in Cabin 3 when I went down to Jasper Creek to to see if the suckers had come up the creek in the morning.   None were present.  A bit later in the day, they decided this day to be their day.

The water was low in the creek to begin with so the suckers were pretty shallow.   Suckers like hot weather if they can get it in the spring in northern Minnesota, and they will usually pile up in the creek.  There were some bunches of males and females - males have a subtle to not-so-subtle stripe on their sides and tend to be a bit smaller.  Sometimes, it is hard to tell just by looking at them.

I  went down to the creek with my sidekick, Delilah leading the way and the video sums it all up.

The next day, the temps dropped into the 40's and then freezing and the suckers completely disappeared from the creek.  Then, somebody pulled the beaver dam out of Jasper Creek up at the culvert of the highway and the water became very high.  a major temperature drop combined with fierce rapids pretty much shut down the sucker spawn for 2015.  What you see in the video was the spawn for the season.  This is a good thing as we'd like to see sucker numbers drop as a lake will only support so many pounds of fish and every sucker removed opens up a space for another game fish.

Delilah had fun while it lasted.

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