If At First You Don't Succeed....

...try and try again to have spring come. I've lost count as to which attempt at spring we are on. One friend on Saturday night said that he was trying to adjust to his third winter in six months. This one really does seem endless, but in true Minnesota fashion, we can always find someplace that had it worse. When I talked to Paul on Saturday, he said that they had received between six and twelve inches in western Minnesota. Makes our dusting look great. I think the most challenging part was to see it snowing so often over the weekend. The ground melted most of it through the day, but it was getting difficult to remain cheerful while seeing so many flakes in the air.


We did have some honest-to-goodness seasonal weather a week ago, enough so to prompt us to take a picnic up to the end of the trail. The snow didn't let us drive the full campground loop, but we were able to walk into a site and enjoy our favorite picnic foods. We will be there this coming weekend, too, as this is the area that we have been assigned for planting trees during the Gunflint Green-Up. Greg has been planting trees since I first met him, and our kids have grown up knowing that each year, they will have a quota of trees to plant on our property. It's been very satisfying to see these trees grow up. We look forward to planting in the forest, this time around, and then to watching these trees in years to come.

A trip to Trail's End wouldn't be complete without a hike in to check on the river. It was roaring! The recent snow and rains have brought lots of run-off water to the river, and it is a fun sight to see. We watched for walleyes swimming upstream to spawn, but didn't find any. A few ducks were swimming at the mouth of the river, where a large area was ice-free.

This is a shot of the river from April of 2007, when Greg and I went up there. I still had a walking cast on my foot, so I didn't do much hiking around. The water level was down last year, so Greg was able to do a lot of rock-hopping on the river.

And finally, a view from April of 2006.