Something new on Saturday

We began the day by starting the puzzle Kookum brought for the boy last night.  We worked on it for about an hour, had the border done, before it was time to leave for ballet lessons. He had a surprisingly good day at the ballet "studio", listened well and performed amusingly.



From there we went to Canadian Tire where we looked at the prices of different size canning jars and perused the sporting goods aisle.  We ended up buying two pairs of snowshoes - one for boy and one for me.  I'm looking forward to test driving them. Perhaps tomorrow!  While at Canadian Tire, someone in line started talking to us, asking where we were going to snowshoe.  I said that we had plans to go on our property, and then mentioned the book my sister got me for Christmas - a book about hiking trails in Nova Scotia. She said that she was transferred here with the military about a year ago, and had a pair of brand new snowshoes which had not even been used.  We talked a bit about Roxbury, and even the clerk agreed that hike was well-worth the effort.

I regret not giving her our name and number, as it was a prime opportunity to make a new friend in the area.  Hopefully we'll run into her again soon, so we can make a connection.

Last night we all got to talking about dog-sledding, with Kookum and Mooshum sharing some of their experiences with sledding in the Northwest Territories. Did you know that Mooshum did a run around Great Slave Lake to commemorate the last RCMP run?  It was 980 miles in 10 days! Can you wrap your mind around that? It's almost 100 miles a day!  Simply amazing.

I took Mooshum downstairs and dug out Petey's old harness and put it on Truman. This planted the seed for this afternoon's adventure. 

After arriving home from Canadian Tire we harnessed up the dogs and hooked them up to the 'boggan.  Aida's harness fits her perfectly and Petey's harness fits Troodle perfectly so we hooked 'em up and took 'em out on the beautiful 'boggan Auntie Carla gave us last year for Christmas.

This was Truman's first pull and I was anxious to see how he'd do.  I'm not sure if Aida was stressed by the events, or was feeling a bit under the weather, but she barfed in the back yard (of course Truman thought this was fantastic!).  She seemed on her game after that and was pretty good at keeping Truman on track.

We loaded the boy on the 'boggan at the top of the logging road, then made our way down to the brook. The video below is part of the return trip, back up to the house.

 

Poor Troodle kept getting caught up in the coupler, and I did shorten it eventually. This did two things - allowed Aida to be a little closer to him, keeping him on track; and, prevented him from getting his left front leg caught up in the ropes. They both did very well on the way back, walking at a steady pace directly behind me.  Sadly Laura's camera died and she wasn't able to get the most successful part of the outing. But, there will be more opportunities as it seems to really challenge Tru mentally and physically.

I also think a third dog would be perfectly able to haul the boy around - two seemed to be a bit burdened by his dense little frame!

After our little doggie excursion, we returned to the house and fired up the tractor for a bit of "Log Hunting".  Laur and the boy searched for logs in the snow, whilst I drove the tractor, cut the logs into manageable sizes, tossed the into the loader and brought them back up to the house. I'll likely spend much of Monday splitting and stacking the four sizable logs we found.

My tractor is working quite well (knock on wood).  I then went out to the meadow, moved some old brush into the middle of the field next to our discarded Yule Tree.   I think next year we won't buy a tree as it makes me a little sad to see a dead tree laying out in the middle of no where.  Next year we're planning to hook up the LED twinkly lights to the solar collector and have a nicely lit tree outside of the house - continuing on with it's happy little life.

Our plan for tomorrow is up in the air. We might go out to Annapolis Royal (that's my research for tonight), or head back out to the meadow to harvest some logs from the beaver pond area.  It appears that some of the popple (that's what they call poplar trees 'round here) have fallen and it would be good to get that cleaned up. Although poplar isn't the greatest to burn, these have been dead-standing for at least a couple years, so hopefully they are not rotten.

Stay tuned for Sunday Drivers' tomorrow!