Brrrrrr

It was-50 degrees today with the windchill and I taught frozen lake study. An interesting experience where thankfully nobody, including me, got frostbite.

The end.

Ely, MN

Mary Beth and I took a short get away to Ely, MN. It's about an hour and a half further inland from me on highway 1. It is a popular town because it's on the edge of Boundary Waters and pretty touristy. We did a little shopping, got massages, and made tacos in our hotel room. It was fantastic. 

We also took a little snowshoeing trip in the Boundary Waters. We were on a lake the whole time, trekking across it to find some Native American pictographs on a cliff face....we never actually saw them. Mostly because we forgot the map and thought we'd gone far enough and that they were covered in snow. But we had a great time anyways. We were the only ones there and the silence and snow falling was magical. 

We also came across a fresh wolf kill from the previous night which was creepy. There were two halves of a deer and we could still see the spots where the wolves had taken parts to eat a little away from the main pieces. Needless to say, I started checking over my shoulders for wolves that might be stalking us...

Lax Lake Highway

So here we are, driving on a road, that is on a lake. 

And now sitting on top of a car that is on the lake.  

Drinking some MN root beer, on top of a car, on top of a lake.  

Minnesotans are crazy. My comfort level with being on frozen lakes has not really increased at all.....maybe after a few months of teaching on one it'll get better. 

Winter Training Plus a Beautiful Sloan Guest

I'm back at WR and it is a whole other world covered in snow. We had three days of winter training starting on the second and I got a few pictures to share. 

We started off with Superior Snowshoe class. This was my first experience with snowshoeing and I really liked it. It's kind of an awkward walking motion, but great because we were off trail almost the whole time. This picture is when we were crossing frozen Raven Lake.

And other snowshoeing picture as we tromp through the woods.

Going across frozen Wolf Lake, Marshall Mountain to the right.

Speaking of snowshoes...here are tracks of an adorable snowshoe hare. They turn all white in the winter (brown in the summer) and have giant back feet to have better flotation over deep snow.

 View of Wolf Lake

And one of the views of Superior we hiked to.

On Thursday we did frozen lake study where we measured ice depth, lowered sonar and cameras into the holes, did a little ice fishing, and cut some chunks of ice out of the lake.....but I forgot to bring my camera with me. 

But on Friday I was joined by this adorable creature. She tagged along for our Ojibwe snowshoeing class training. I think she had fun despite the look on her face :)

 The view of Raven Lake, and behind Lake Superior from our Ojibwe site.

Friday afternoon we did some manual labor like move a voyageur canoe...which was actually really fun. It is a new one we had to slide down to Wolf Lake.

Ice fishing houses on Wolf Lake.....all the tracks from sliding the canoe across the lake.

Chunks of ice we had cut from the lake the previous day.
I'm not going to lie, I think this is crazy and will be terrified to do it with kids. There is a saw you use to cut the ice, then tongs to pull it out of the water...I am sure me or one of my kids is going to fall in on accident.

They were also working on building a quinzee, which is a mixture of a snow cave and igloo. You pile a ton of snow, pack it down, then dig out the middle. They are building a giant one so we could bring a whole class of kids in at the same time. But Christina and I ran away to....

...Chickadee landing! She told me she doesn't like birds because she has had negative experiences so I had to give her a good one. And what's better then having birds land all over you Beauty and the Beast style with an adorable red squirrel as well munching out of your hand?

I also took her cross country skiing for the first time! We have two sets of ski trails that are kept groomed for classes.

 And of course we fit in some rock climbing....basically I wanted to wear her out and make her really sore. And I think I succeeded. Truthfully winter training has been really exhausting and our dorm has had many stretching parties and we groan every time we stand from all the snowshoeing and skiing.

 Beach of Lake Superior with all the snow...really cool.

So thankful I got to see this girl and share some of my crazy life with her! I am also really glad she didn't freeze to death!

The group at a Lake Superior overlook. 

That weird sport where you slide rocks on ice...

So curling...what a funny sport. So every year Wolf Ridge has a bonspiel - curling tournament - and it is ridiculously fun. It is an insane game that is so complicated I hardly thought about strategy so much as not falling on the ice. There is four people on a team, the captain is called a skip and they tell you what angle and how much curl to put on the stone. I just tried to do what they told me to. 

 Here is a shot of me sweeping. Sweeping was so exhausting. The skip tells you when and how hard to sweep. You sweep to straighten a stone and to speed it up. It's interesting you sweep your stone to get it where you want and the other team might sweep more to make it move past where you want.

 Me preparing/trying to figure out what my skip is telling me to do.

 The slide....

It was a ton of fun. I played 4 games total and my team placed 6th out of 16.
I won't become a pro curler anytime soon but I would certainly play again for fun and have a much bigger appreciation for the sport.

This is something silly. For rock climbing I laid out bananagrams on a table with the word adventure already spelled out. I asked my 7th graders to spell out other words that had to to with adventure throughout class. This is what they came up with.








Coming home on Saturday - break is booked solid! I'm so excited to see all you beautiful  people!

Tis the Season

The holidays have arrived and I started them off with a bang. It was my first Thanksgiving away from home, and while I missed my family and friends dearly, my Wolf Ridge family made a pretty good substitute. I have tons of pictures that I'll share the story with. A permanent staffer donated their house to us since they were going out of town. We shared her house with Carson the parrot and two golden retrievers Chevy and Shiloh. Here's a picture of one of the dogs waiting for Carson to drop a treat.

This house is one of the few with cable in the area so we also got a chance to watch the Macy's Parade. Although truthfully I didn't watch much because I was cooking in the kitchen.







I almost forgot the gravy(I did...but Jill asked where it was). You can see most of the food is laid out and I'm scurrying to figure out how to make gravy.












Mary Beth took some artsy photos of our beautiful turkey. I think we did pretty good. It tasted pretty good too.







It looked so pretty I was scared to cut it....and in truth it looked very mangled after I dug in. Props to my mom for telling me how to cut it over the phone.














Group photo before we ate.









And let the eating marathon commence. If you know me you probably know I eat a lot. Thanksgiving is a whole new game. I think I scared my tablemates when I just wouldn't stop eating. They were done long before I gave up.





And then Carson started hoping around on the floor....
















A few hours later they talked my stuffed belly into desert. I made a cheesecake, apple pie, and MB made pumpkin pie. I was still stuffed and could hardly appreciate, but I enjoyed them as breakfast the next few days.
















Poor me.








Then it was time to cuddle with the dogs. Yes, that is me intertwined with a dog on the floor. How could I not? This is also when cribbage began (an awesome card game I will be teaching everyone who will let me when I get home) and Christmas movies!















And then with a perfect ending we got our first heavy snow! We made the dogs take photos with us and danced around a bit. We got ~5 inches that  night and a few more over the rest of the weekend.

The next day we set out on an adventure. We took a hike through the picturesque woods to find our very own Christmas tree.


We finally picked a winner, and used an old fashioned cross cut saw to cut it down. It was pretty silly  because of how thin the tree was but it was more for the stories/photos then anything.





I also made one of the most perfect snow angles of all time.












It's kind of a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, but in reality it's the cutest thing ever. We're still in the process of decorating. We're hosting a holiday parting this Friday so it will be all decked out by then.

Other things that have been happening....

We took a field trip to the Duluth aquarium last Friday. We got to meet with the education staff and get some behind the scene tours. It was fun to see environmental ed in a different setting. We also had class at UMD and decided it warranted a night on the town. Mostly just exhausted us though. 

Saturday we went to a concert - Cloud Cult. I highly recommend them. They're from MN, and pretty popular up here. The show was fantastic and a full on artistic experience. They had about 6 people playing in the band, videos playing, we were dancing and two artists painting on stage throughout the concert. The paintings get auctioned for local causes. 

This afternoon I was carving a spoon. There is a staff member who is a pro spoon carver that has been sharing his skills with us. It's hard work, and my spoon isn't quite done yet but working hard on it. 

Just two weeks before Christmas break. I think it'll go fast but at the same time it'll be very  busy. Have to write a paper for my UMD class, I'm doing the raptor program for the first time all by myself Wednesday night, and just lots of teaching. 

Chickadeedeedee

It snowed on Monday. It was gorgeous. I was teaching Orienteering so I hung out at the start while the kids navigated courses with compasses through the woods. The snow actually hung out for a couple days...but it's been warm again this weekend.

Snow means it's winter time,and winter time means the chickadees are flocking, and that means we get to do chickadee landing now! So there are benches set up year round that have cutouts of people and are dressed up so birds get used to them. In the winter chickadees don't migrate but they form flocks which kind of work like wolf-packs - there is an alpha chickadee and the flocks will defend territories (usually around feeders). Anywho we get to bring kids here, they sit really still, and we put seed on their head and on their hand and chickadees land on them. Obviously you can tell from my expressions it's a really cool experience.

 Here's what we really do when we're waiting for kids to come to class after setting up. There are two buildings here with classrooms but classes don't have designated rooms so each time we teach we have to set up and tear down the classroom. And then we just run around from room to room talking to each other till someone sees kids out the windows and we yell 'The kids are COMING!'

Yesterday we had a geology field trip/seminar. All about the geology of the north shore. Lots of stuff about lava flows because pretty much all our rocks are igneous because of the mid-continental rift that formed Lake Superior. This picture shows two different lava flows....and yah that's about how far in depth I'll go haha.