Hola amigos. I know it's been a while since I've blogged at you...
So Sandy and I were up at the lake last weekend for our first visit of the Spring.
We got a bunch of stuff done for such a short visit.
We removed all the fiberglass insulation from the "house" and 25% of the stuff under the house. Sandy relocated a giant brush pile to a location where we can burn it next winter. Here's where the brush used to be:

Everything in front of the rocks was piled about 5 feet deep with brush and rotten logs and stumps.
I spent most of the day Saturday building a little enclosure under the deck to keep the generator in. It's insulated to keep in as much of the noise as possible. The problem is it retains all the heat and exhaust as well, so I need to figure out a way to ventilate it without letting all the sound out.
Saturday evening I noticed that there was a mature Aspen tree leaning toward the cabin.

It's the big tree on the right that looks like it's falling over.
Left to it's own devices this tree will eventually fall and hit our cabin. It couldn't be better aimed if someone had planned it. Given the size and positioning of the tree and the relative quality of our cabin I'm pretty sure this would make my Dad's tree woes look like nothing. This thing would oblierate our cabin.
So last night Sandy called and introduced herself to our neighbors to the West, the tree is on their property. We explained the situation and Betsy (the neighbor) said she was familar with the tree in question and had been hoping that it would fall and smash the house on our lot. We assured her that we intend to tear the house down this Summer but wanted to keep the cabin and she gladly agreed that we should cut the tree down.
So now I'm in the market for a chainsaw.
Lastly here's a picture of the burn pile Sandy built.

The truck is a rental and the bags in the back of it are full of fiberglass from the house. We brought them back here and are throwing them out one or two at a time.
As we were driving down the Gunflint we passed a firetruck headed north and then later a convoy of about 6 forest service pickups with fire crews. Closer to Duluth we heard on the radio that there was a fire burning near Ham lake on the East border of the BWCA. It was really windy, warm and dry all weekend so we were pretty sure this wasn't going to be an easy fire to deal with.
It started on Saturday and spread rapidly with the wind to the North West, that was taking it toward the Cavity Lake fire which I wrote about a lot last Fall. That would have been good because it would have run out of fuel, but Monday the wind turned to the East and the long fireline from the day before started moving straight East toward the Gunflint trail.
As it stands now it's burned over 17,000 acres and between 30 and 40 buildings have been destroyed many of them houses or cabins. It's enveloped the entire north end of the Gunflint trail and has now spread across the border into Canada.
It's about 20 miles from our property so there's no imminent danger for us although the conditions are so bad that we could have other serious fires in the area if it stays dry this Spring and Summer.