Superior Living

We've been having some great November weather this week with sunny skies and temperatures 10-15 degrees above normal.  Usually, November is cloudy, cold and wet, so I don't notice the long shadows up here.  The sun's angle is so low that it's almost always shining right in my eyes. 

The window in front of the kitchen sink faces south.  This morning I had to put the blind almost all the way down to keep the sun out of my eyes while I was doing the dishes...and that was around 11:00!  Here's a picture from the trail cam showing how long the shadows were yesterday while the squirrel was cleaning up leftover corn.  Even though the clock says 14:38, it was more like 13:08 or just after 1:00pm. 

We haven't been seeing much wildlife lately.  The deer have gone nocturnal and the bear are finding dens.  Yesterday we took a drive on a bunch of back roads and all we saw was one grouse and one porcupine.  There are a lot of eagles around.  I would imagine they're moving south now as the northern lakes and rivers freeze up.   I took this picture this morning.  They sure are big, beautiful birds.

I'll be heading home tomorrow morning for a few days.  I don't like being here on the opening weekend of deer hunting and I have a 20+ year tradition to keep up with my friend Connie.   On Saturday, we'll go to the craft shows, have lunch and catch up with each others lives.  I haven't seen her since we did this last year, so there will be a lot of catching up to do.

You may remember back this summer when I showed you pictures of the deer decoy Jim bought at a garage sale.  We put it out by the trail cam and got some good pictures of a bear and other deer trying to figure out why that deer didn't run off. 

Since that time Kenny, or Jenny when the antlers are removed has been standing over by the wood pile up until this weekend.  Jim put Kenny out in front of the trail cam on Saturday night, but there wasn't much action.  That's probably because the deer are so stirred up with so many hunters crashing around in the woods getting ready for the hunt that starts this Saturday.  That and the bucks are kinda love sick now and they're running all over the place looking for a hot little doe...if you know what I mean!

Sunday, Jim took the antlers off Kenny and now we had Jenny out by the cam.  When he brought in the card this morning and I saw there were only 70 pictures on it, I didn't expect much.  Was I ever wrong!

First a doe carefully came around, had a little corn snack and she left.  Later in the night this coyote approached Jenny and by the 7 pictures we got, it looked sort of confused that the deer didn't move.  About an hour after that, the bobcat came through and did about the same thing.  Here are  a couple pictures of each of them.  Oh and in case you're wondering, those are pieces of my Cinderella pumpkin the deer munch on.  They love pumpkins!

This is before I broke the pumpkin into pieces for their eating pleasure.

One other thing...the time and temperature on all of these isn't right.  I didn't adjust the time when it changed and the temp always looks colder than what it really is.

Well, let's see how well my memory is.  Nah, I don't even want to try to remember everyday since the last time I updated this.  So here's a few highlights since last week...or was it the week before that I updated here?

After many cold, rainy and windy days, we went back to Madison on Monday and you guessed it, the weather changed and both Monday and Tuesday were nice days up here.  We could tell by the pictures on the trail cams.  It's amazing how many animals come by to see if there's any treats for them.  Here's a couple of animals getting their pictures taken for the first time by our cams.

Red Squirrel above and below, a mouse right out with the deer.  There were also pictures of gray squirrels, bunnies, raccoon, blue jays and the bobcat.

While at home, we were very busy.  Lots of laundry, leaves to rake, grocery shopping and my car had to go in for some brake work.  Jim got his hair cut and I had an appointment for my annual mammogram. 

Wednesday the City of Madison had the excitement of having the first US President visit since Harry Truman was there in 1950.  We drove by the airport with the hopes of seeing Air Force One and we did...but only the tail of the plane.  We thought we'd be able to see more of it when we came back into town, but that didn't happen.  It was right at the time the President was ready to leave and all roads were closed.  We took an alternate route home and got there just in time to see him fly over our house!  I waved, but I couldn't see if he waved back or not. 

We got back up here Thursday around noon.  While waiting for the cabin to heat up, we took a drive down the road our cabin's on.  About five miles down the road I noticed an eagle on the north side of the road.  I told Jim to stop so I could take his picture.

Seeing how it wasn't in any hurry to fly off, we figured there must be some fresh road kill in the area.  Sure enough.  We looked on the other side of the road and saw this group resting after having a fresh venison lunch.

And one more picture from Jim's deer park.  This is a combination of treasures he's picked up on his scouting trips.  You can see Kenny in the background.  Sometimes I gotta wonder about the man.

First let me tell you about the weather.  We've had a little snow, a little sunshine, lots of clouds and rain.  The temperatures have been on the cool side, but not terribly cold, so no complaints about that.  Lots of people are glad about the rain because the lake levels are still low from two summers of near drought conditions.  Others are glad that it's not snow.  So for the most part, everyone around here is happy.

Just when I said we probably wouldn't see any more bears this year, this guy strolled through here on Saturday.  I was in the kitchen making supper, Jim was taking out the garbage and Molly was out in front doing her business.  For some reason, I turned and looked out the window just as this guy was coming out of the brush.  I went and yelled to Jim "there's a bear out there".  He answers back "a deer?".  "NO", I yelled back even louder, "A BLACK BEAR"!  Then I called Molly in and she listened like a real good girl and trotted right back in the cabin, without ever seeing the bear.  Luckily we got his picture on the trail cam.

Just before all this happened, we watched Big Mama, Little Squirt and a bunny.  The little deer was stomping at the bunny and trying to act like a big shot.   It didn't scare the bunny at all.  The trail cam captured some good expressions on Little Squirt's face.

Sunday was a day of football and we were very happy with the outcome of the games.  Yeah Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers! 

This morning we were driving to one of our favorite walking spots when we saw this happy grouse displaying his feathers for the she-grouse further back off the road.

When we were heading back to the cabin after our walk, the two grouse were still hanging around in the same area.  They're very lucky we aren't grouse hunters. 

Like many Mondays, we went to Superior shopping this morning.  On the was we saw 4 eagles in trees along the road.  These two were nice enough to stay put while I took their pictures.  We figured so much wildlife was out this morning for two reasons.  One...it's wasn't raining and two...it's Monday and all the weekend warriors have gone home.