Books in the Woods

Gunflint Weekend March 26-29, 2009

We leave town around 9am, and don't stop until we get to Hinckley. We go to Tobies (of course) for a rest, a donut, and a coffee.
Back in the Suburban and again, no stops until Duluth. We go to Grandma's (of course) for a rest, a lunch of some sort, and a stop in the gift shop.
Back to the Suburban, no stops until Grand Marais. We go to Hardware Hank (of course) but this stop needs an explanation. We have always stopped at Hardware Hank to get gas, rest, and sometimes make minor purchases such as gummy bears, Yahtzee, and other assorted candy. It has become a tradition.
Then we are off down the Gunflint Trail. This year, on our way up the north shore we started seeing remnants of the ice storm that they had earlier in the week. There were trees broken and power lines down from about Tettegouche State Park all the way up to Grand Marais. And the ice continued as we started down the Gunflint Trail.



All of the shiny stuff you see on the branches is ice.

When we arrive at the Gunflint Lodge we unpack all of our stuff. All meals are included for this weekend, however there are a few necessities that we always bring with.

Chocolate - you can never have enough!







Beth needs her Mountain Dew, and we all need water, and all of us except Patty need our wine. Poor Patty has developed some sort of problem with alcohol, and if she drinks any she will get immediately sick. It is not a lot of fun for her, but she would take sober over puking any day.

Most years I make something for everyone that is coming. For example, a St. Patrick's Day bookmark, beaded necklaces, and this year the project was hats. Here we all are in the hats that I made. In the back row we have Beth on the left, and Connie on the right in the snowflake sweater. Front row starting on the left - Nancy (Janet's sister), Gayle, Janet (Nancy's sister), Patty and me. You can't tell from the picture but all of our hats have little curlies on top instead of pompoms. I occasionally have a crafty idea, and this was one of those times.



This picture was taken in our cabin, which is cabin number 2, if you would like to look at the Gunflint Lodge website. http://www.gunflint.com/ This was the 7th visit for Connie, Janet, Patty and I, the 6th for Beth, the 3rd for Gayle, and the 1st for Nancy. Unfortunately there are no pictures of Nancy's initiation, where we made her run around the cabin outside in the nude. But don't let that stop you from joining us sometime, we really do have a lot of fun. We did let Nancy have a lot of wine before we "suggested" she do her streaking.

Lets talk about wildlife. One of the reasons we come to the Gunflint. We'll start small - BIRDS.






Then we'll move to a little bigger animal - RED SQUIRRELS.












And then SKUNK!
Patty and I went for a drive further down the Gunflint Trail on Saturday afternoon and we saw this skunk that had obviously just come out of hibernation. It was very slow, and sloth like.







We brought something else with us this year, a 40 pound bag of corn. In past years the Lodge has feed the deer, and there was plenty of corn to take back to your cabin, to put outside your window for some prime deer viewing. In the past few years they have cut back on the amount of corn available, so we brought our own!

Here is Patty, wearing her new hat, putting out some corn for the deer.



If you feed them, they will come!








Not only did the deer eat outside our window, at some point during the weekend we all got to have them eat out of our hand! This has never happened before, but I think since the herd isn't as big, these deer that hang around the lodge all winter to eat have become tamer than they used to be.







Mike and I went to the Chocolate Lover's Weekend at the Gunflint in January.

Since I didn't have the blog back in January, I'll put in a few photos so you can see what it was like in January. We were in cabin 17, for those keeping track.

Our chocolate appetizers: garlic toast with chocolate (very tasty!), chocolate for dipping the fruit in and a huge shrimp covered in chocolate.

Pork chop with a chocolate rub, and chocolate/cheese ravioli.

Mexican chocolate main course one night and chocolate venison stew the next!


As you can tell, the Chocolate Lovers Weekend was about 2 things, chocolate and love!

But we did have some time to feed the deer...









Since Mike had this deer eating out of his hand, and the bag, it wasn't a total shock that we all got to feed them.

As you could see from the chocolate weekend, another reason to go to the Gunflint is the food.


Here is some of the food we had at the books weekend -
nicely presented salad, with homemade peppercorn dressing.




My steak with horseradish butter on top - yum!

Patty and her chocolate, ala mode, bread pudding.





Creme Brule and the fancy new Gunflint mug!
Available for purchase, of course.


Beth and I ran out during dinner to get take some pictures - and here is the best one I took!


The beautiful sunset of the north woods.

In case you noticed I didn't talk much about the book part of Books in the Woods. The authors this year weren't super friendly or social. This was the first year we didn't get group shots of us with the authors. In the last few years we've had really fun authors, like Will Weaver and Lorna Landvik, and last year Brian Freeman. The books were ok, but definately not the highlight of our trip this year.

We are anxious to see who is going to be featured next year. The list is usually posted somewhere between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Most of us plan on going back next year, although I'm hoping I'll be in Spain with the PLHS band!