Sunday, August 26, 2012

On your mark, get set, go!

Good afternoon to all!


Some of you who have been up more recently may have heard me talking about the Red Lake Triathlon.  They had the 23rd annual Red Lake Triathlon last Sunday morning and I am proud to say that I took part in it.  This was definitely a new type of competition for me and one that I was not quite adequately prepared for.  I have been running a little more regularly this summer (more for my sanity than anything else) and I managed to do a few practice swims before the event, but other than that I was the farthest thing from prepared.  

Sherry from the Marina has been on my case the last few summers about competing in the triathlon and I had successfully avoided it with telling her I couldn't just leave the lodge to do the event - we all know I make better breakfast than Travis (ha!).  But alas, I could actually swing it this summer so I figured what the heck.  I plunked my $30 down and bravely signed up.  I was at least smart enough to register for the "sprint distance" which consisted of a 750m swim, 20km bike ride, and a 5km run.  Sherry was nice enough to lend me her bike and her helmet and I met her at her house a few weeks before the triathlon to adjust my seat and helmet.  So I should be good to go on the biking portion, right?

When Carson, Travis' brother, was up here he helped me measure the swim distance on Parker from a boat while holding a hand-held GPS.  FYI - if you swim to the point and back you've done about a 1/2 mile or around the 750m necessary for my race.  Donny Aiken, who owns the marina, let me borrow his daughter's pink swim goggles so I could at least swim in the right direction on race day.   Luckily I had my own running shoes and gear and I definitely felt most confident about the run portion of the race.  I come from a running background and was pretty sure I could at least finish the 5km run, now whether it would be pretty or not was still in question.  

I feel it is important to share that when I was doing this practice swimming and when I signed up for the race it was consistently in the 80's during the day with water surface temperature hitting over 70 degrees.  Care to guess what the temperature was the few days leading up to the race?  Mid 50's with low 40's at night.  Yikes!  

So there I was on Saturday evening getting everything packed and ready for the following morning, race day.  Anyone who knows me well knows that the first and MOST important thing to pack is snacks.  I don't like to be cold or wet either, but if I am hungry - watch out!  Snacks get packed, every combination of bike/run outfit gets packed, water bottle is packed, goggles, extra socks, shoes, you get the picture.  Looks like I am getting ready to leave for three whole days.  I double check everything and I decide maybe I should google "triathlon tips" since I have never done anything like this before.  Let me just say: WORST. IDEA. EVER.  I quickly wasted 30 minutes peeling through websites, forums, etc. and learned how much training is recommended, the gear you should have (which I most certainly did not have), and how to set up and manage your transition station.  Transition station?  What the heck is that?  I'll tell you what it is, something that had not even crossed my mind.  Insta-panic for Carrie.  I called Travis back to our room when I had reached full potential meltdown mode.  He knows this look quite well, unfortunately.  Like always, he knew what to say and not say and tried to kindly suggest that the Red Lake triathlon was probably fairly low key and that I had zero pressure to do well or do it at all.  I signed up for this because I wanted to do something fun, right?  So I headed to bed feeling better about everything and refocused on how cold it would probably be the next morning.  

I woke up at 6am to get dressed and had my one cup of coffee with two slices of peanut butter toast and a banana.  So far so good.  Travis got up to walk me down to the dock and it was definitely chilly.  First time I have ever had to take a boat to get to a race!  I told him if I wasn't back by noon to start getting concerned.  The boat ride was awesome, very rarely do I get out on the water this early in the day.  The steam on the water looked so cool and to be the only one out there was just super peaceful.  Definitely helped me to calm my mind and my jitters.  


I picked up my borrowed bike and headed to the check in on Howey Street by the public access docks.  I quickly realized that it was pretty low key (Travis is right, yet again) and found a place for my bike.  


One of the most fun parts for me was getting my swim cap and my numbers marked on both arms and legs.  I felt very official.  


Once I got that taken care of I set up my transition station and started to survey the competition.  See the girl in the picture below?  I could tell she was legit - and I think she ended up getting 2nd place.  She was strictly business, like jumping in the water and warming up for the swim business.


I was starting to notice that probably half the field had wet suits on.  Seemed like a good idea, since we were all getting ready to swim a fair distance in some cooler temperatures.  I'm tough though, right?  I was also noticing that the rest of the field had legitimate swim suits on, the kind you see on people who can swim laps with proper stroke form.  As we got to the starting line (where you had the choice to start in or out of the water, I chose out) I realized that I was the ONLY person with neither a wet suit or actual swimming swim suit on.  I had settled on sports bra and undies that could pass as swim bottoms, mostly for their increased probability of staying put when entering and exiting the water.  Yea, this is what I had to work with people.  


Unfortunately I didn't get pictures of anything during the race, but here is a quick recap for you.

Swimming:  I felt like I did pretty well.  I was probably in the back half, but I felt comfortable about my pace the entire time.  I never felt like I was super fatigued or at risk of drowning.  It was neat because they had 2 float-planes set up in Howey Bay and you had to swim to each and then back to the dock, sort of like a triangle shaped swim course.  I'd say about half way through my hands and feet were completely numb.  When I got out of the water and on the dock it was challenging to get to my bike and get changed for the rest of the race.  Partially because everything was wet (picture me trying to put on running tights when my legs are dripping with water and my hands and legs are totally numb) and partially because my mobility was limited due to the cold.  I'm sure my transition time was pretty poor, but I had no idea what to expect.  


Biking:  This was maybe the toughest part.  I was nervous about being cold (which I wasn't) and I was nervous about the borrowed bike being up to snuff (which it probably wasn't).  It wouldn't change gears very well, so I just tried to keep it in a fairly low gear so I could make it up the hills.  Speaking of hills, there was a MONSTER hill right before the turn around.  I was trying to gage my position overall for females and was probably in 8-10th place during the bike portion.  Some of these may have been on teams, I wasn't really sure.  The girl I talked about it the picture above, yeah - she was WAY ahead of me.  This portion of the race was when I sort of realized that my inexperience was making it pretty much impossible for me to win or place in the top three, so I sort of decided to just have fun and enjoy the rest of the race.  Oh, I also had a super sore bum from the bike seat, like from the minute I started.  

Running:  I was surprised how much my legs felt like jello after getting off the bike.  It probably took about half of the run for me to get my legs back.  I did pass about 4 females on the run, so I think I finished in the top 5 or so.  I really enjoyed the run, I was pretty tired so I never felt like I reached "race pace" but that was fine.  It was super fun to finish strong in my strongest event out of the three.  I really do love to run, and it made me excited to get back home and do some more serious training this fall.  

Right after I finished one of the race officials came up to ask me my name.  Turns out they had my race number down wrong, so they didn't get my swim time.  Kind of a bummer.  They did get my total time which was 1:40:something.  Not bad, huh?  I don't know how many females competed in the sprint distance, but I think there were about 50 people total.  I wasn't able to go to the awards/wrap up event because I had to get back to the lodge, but it was fun to see and meet a different crowd from Red Lake.  I will definitely be doing another triathlon in the future, hopefully with a little more training under my belt.  


Anyone else tackling new adventures out there?  If so, more power to ya!

Carrie







Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Reason #83 we have the best guests ever!!!

Good evening!

Last week I briefly mentioned a special dessert we enjoyed out at the lodge that I wanted to tell you guys about.  Well, this story really starts two years ago during the 2010 summer in August.  Travis had just arrived with our group on Saturday and we were busy unloading everything into the cabins when I miraculously heard the phone ring.  It was Wayne Aiken back at the landing calling to tell me our other group had arrived.  I instantly got sweaty.  I calmly asked Wayne how many of them were there (4 people) and I asked him what their names were.  He told me it was Jim England's group.  At this point I had stretched the phone cord on the bag phone as far as it would go and had reached out to grasp the schedule list of who we had down for that week.  I quickly peeled over the 2010 reservation list and did NOT see anyone named Jim England - party of four.  As far as I knew I had never met or heard of Jim England or his plans to come to Eagle Falls Lodge.  Oops.  Thats what we call in the business a big, fat, lodge FAIL.  I told Wayne to pass on the message that we were on the way to get them and sorry about the delay.  

We then had to rearrange our current guests to leave enough room for Jim England and we raced across the lake to pick them up.  Thank goodness Jim, Rick, Dan, and Myrle were good sports about the whole mix up that we, of course, felt terrible about.  Don't feel too bad for them, however, because they made sure to remind us about it ALL week long.  Kept asking if we had enough food for them, or should they wait to see if there were any leftovers. They fit right in to our Eagle Falls Lodge family.  

Sometime during that week I was sitting in the lodge asking Jim about where he was from, what he did, etc., and he let it slip that he owns a homemade ice-cream shop.  Let me repeat that.  He OWNS a homemade ice-cream shop.  I was like Cosmo on steak night the rest of the week - drooling and slap happy thinking about ice-cream.  I very plainly (much to Travis' dismay) let him know how interested I would be in some of this said ice-cream.  

Fast forward to 2012.  We triple checked and confirmed Jim England's week, group size, arrival time, to make sure there were no slip-ups.  About the week before their arrival Jim emailed and asked the much anticipated question of what ice-cream flavor I would like.  I responded casually saying something about whatever he thought was best, something in season would be nice, but immediately started counting down the days until my ice-cream delivery would arrive.  

Let me tell you, it was well worth the wait!  Jim brought me 2.5 gallons of homemade fresh blackberry ice-cream, sweet glorious made-with-real-rich-cream-ice-cream.  Yep, we have the best guests ever for sure.  I think I had about 20 bowls before the first half of the week was over.  I hadn't even made a dent in the ice-cream bucket so I very graciously shared it with the whole group that week.  What a treat! 


I am one happy girl in this picture with Jim, and with a belly full of tasty ice-cream.


For those of you lucky enough to live near Olathe or Lawrence, Kansas you HAVE to go to Sylas and Maddy's ice-cream shop to confirm for yourself how delicious it is.  To go to their facebook page click here for more information.   

Here is a picture of Jim's group from last week - don't they look like some of the best guests ever?


Take care,

Carrie

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Northern Pike Season Record

The battle for Northern Pike supremacy heated up last week.  As you recall, four fishermen and women were tied for the biggest Northerns of the 2012 season with 42" fish.  Last week we saw a flurry of big Northerns caught.   The record changed hands three times in 48 hours.

Denise caught a 43" Northern on Tuesday afternoon on Red Lake.



Terry topped that on Wednesday afternoon with a 44.75" Northern caught and released a few yards off the Parker Lake dock.  We hope to have a picture soon, but I can vouch for it since I was the one that measured it on the dock.  

Ahren added a 40" Northern off Parker Lake.



Denise struck again on Thursday morning.  She caught and released this 45.5" Northern on Red Lake to reclaim biggest fish on the board for the season.



We have a large group this week all chasing Northerns again so we'll see if anyone can dethrone Denise.  They already released two 40s, a 42", and a 44.5" fish in the first couple hours on the water today.  Stay tuned...


Tuesday, August 14, 2012

A new camp record!

Hello everyone,

We had an awesome small mouth bass caught on Parker Lake last night.  The guys who caught it thought it had to be a large mouth bass because of its size!  It measured in at 23 inches, which crushed the previous camp record.  Going into the season we had a camp record of 18 inches, which was tied in June and then beat out by Betty's 19 inch small mouth in July.  See this post for a picture of her 19 inch fish.  We were all pretty excited last night in the lodge!  Congratulations to Jesse of Madison, WI.  He pretty much has a guaranteed spot in the Christmas letter.  Who knows what today will bring?  



That is what is so completely awesome about coming up here.  You never know what type and size of fish you will bring in the boat.  Everyone was pretty pumped and hopeful this morning that today would be THE day for them!  

Weather has continued to be gorgeous, but the temperatures are definitely starting to drop.  Later this week will have temperatures in the upper 50's - low 60's during the day, with it getting well into the 40's at night.  Fall is right around the corner here in the north country!

Tonight is brisket night at camp.  For those of you who have been up already you know how awesome it is.  We have a special dessert treat tonight as well, thanks to a guest in camp.  More to come on that in the next blog post...

Take care,
Carrie

Friday, August 10, 2012

Big fish, little fish

Good morning!

Another beautiful morning here in Red Lake!  It looks to be nice and clear, but our guests found out this week that can change in a hurry.  We had a big storm roll in on Wednesday afternoon in a matter of minutes and most of our guests were still way out west on Red Lake.  I'm talking huge wind gusts, bolts of lightning and thunder, and HEAVY rain.  Everyone did exactly as they should and eventually made it back to camp.  The storm moved through fast, because the sky was clear and sun was shining by the end of supper.  Makes for a good story to tell folks back home, I suppose.

I even managed to sneak some time out on the lake this week - thanks to some very generous guests willing to arrange their fishing to come pick me up and drop me back off.  I caught some nice fish and it was just perfect weather for being out in the boat.  One of my more interesting catches was this little perch fella.  Would you believe John and I were doing the EXACT same thing and he caught a 23" walleye, while I got a perch that wasn't even as long as the crawler I was using.  See the crawler hanging down on the left side of my fish?  I guess thats why they call it fishing.


We were in Don's boat, and here he is with a nice 25 inch walleye off of Red Lake.


These other pictures were from another group up this week who enjoyed some nice shore lunches during their trip.  Looks like they had fun and ate well!




Their shore lunch may even rival our Monday night fish fry...better step up my game.


Have a great weekend!

Carrie

Friday, August 3, 2012

future fishing all-star!

Wrapped up another awesome week at the lodge!  Everyone got loaded up and is on the journey back home.

I already posted pictures of some of the bigger fish caught this week, but I wanted to highlight one of the more impressive walleyes that was caught (& released!) on Red Lake.  Natalie, who was a first time guest, caught a nice 26.5" walleye which helped her win the group's "big fish contest" this past week.  She went home a veteran angler AND had some extra cash in her pocket.  Way to go!  And we should give a shout out to her grandpa, Terry, for helping with her big catch.  Its always great to see the future generation of anglers do so well and be so excited about fishing.



I'm off to do all the errand running in town as we gear up for another group tomorrow!

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Big fish club

Good evening!

Just finished a whole mess of dishes - lots of happy plates tonight!  Travis did a great job on the barbeque chicken, like always.  We have been busy this week with a mix of old and new guests at the lodge.  Everyone is having fun and we have enjoyed some excellent fish stories.  Weather wise we have had lots of rain during the evening and overnight.  Sunday night we had a HUGE lightning storm with thunder and heavy rain.  Thankfully there was no storm damage.  We did, however, get some surprise guests trying to avoid the storm.  Three couples from Red Lake had been out on the water that evening and got caught in the storm, so they decided to get off the water and come up to the lodge.  They ended up staying for a few hours and didn't attempt getting back to town until close to 11pm.  We were happy to have them seek shelter with us and it turned into a huge Olympic viewing party with everyone hanging out in the main lodge.  Super fun!  It has been interesting to watch the Olympics on some of the Canadian networks, because they focus much more on the Canadian athletes.

Anywho, back to big fish.

This first picture is one from when Travis' relatives were up a few weeks ago.  Megan caught this 26.5" walleye on Red Lake on our Muskie rod, of all things.  We had every rod, reel, net, and piece of tackle loaned out that week.  We may need to get some more back up equipment, it was the first time we had to equip about 20 people at one time!


Next up is a 19" smallmouth caught off Parker by a first time Eagle Falls guest.  Very exciting to see such a nice smallmouth come out of the lake up here.


George is up here this week and caught a nice 38" northern yesterday off of Red Lake.

His fishing partner, Dave, caught a 42" northern on Red Lake earlier in the week.  That puts him in a four way tie for biggest northern of season - 2 caught off Red Lake, and 2 caught off Parker.  I better see if I can go fishing with them in their boat before they leave - it must be lucky!


We will be back this weekend with more pictures of big fish from this past week.

Take care,
Carrie