Juvenile LOON Getting Ready to Fly

 You could see the heavy splashing as the young Loon tired to clear the water.  It covered 300 feet and was still pumping away.  These are heavy birds and they need lots of area to finally get off the water.  There is only one baby Loon on the lake this season.  It's parents flew off about a month ago when other adult Loons came to our lake.  There is quite the ceremony when the Adults met and join up as a pack to fly south or to the coast.  It amazes us that Mother Nature is telling this Juvenile Loon that it had better learn to fly real quick. 

 The lake here will be frozen solid in less than two weeks.

 The Johnson 9.9 will not start.  Bryan is grumbling away about how his old Merc would still start in the cold but these new plastic motors are no good in -10cel.   He finally put it away for the winter and got the small Johnson four stroke.  It seems to be okay. 

 The sun is getting lower and lower in the sky.... it hardly clears the high center mountains now.  We finally got underway at 1 pm to go make trail.... a late start but we can still get in 4 hours of work.

This is across the Narrows from our cabin... you can see the ice forming 20 feet off the shore.  
We did 200 meters of trail and got back to the boat at 6.  The throttle  is frozen open.  Bryan pushed in the choke and started it up....  the second it went he pushed in the choke.  Off we went with a slow rush.  But at least we didn't need to row the 2 1/2 km back to camp.  Motor went into the trapping shed to warm up for the night.  We are heading out again this morning.  The ground is still not frozen solid yet and we can still move logs..... but that will end real soon.