Right now Tim and Paul and some family and friends are at their yearly snowmobiling weekend up our claim cabin. Every year there are breakdowns and this year is no different... Or is it? Yesterday after Tim's brother broke down, Tim was able to come here and take parts off of his trapping snowmobile to fix it. Today after Paul's friend broke down, they were able to come here and trade in the one with the problem for another. All the boys also had a home cooked meal here before they left Wednesday night and showed up to a warm cabin after driving on a groomed trail to get there. Normally they show up to their drop off point late in the day, and break trail to a cold cabin, some years arriving after midnight after problems on the 46km trail. There has also never been the option of spare parts and spare snowmobiles around!

We also try to let everyone understand how remote we are - this hardly seemed so when our guests met us on the road on mail day. We had snowmobiled out to our "halfway camp" where our trail meets the main road. We have a firepit and some benches there to have a quick lunch before we continue on to mail. This week one of our friends from up the road came for a visit at our "camp" and then chauffered us to get our mail and eggs. We thought when we got back to the "camp" we would have to wait a while for the snowmobilers to show up - but they were already there waiting for us. Other friends, expecting we would have a long wait came down to visit us and then the guy taking the mail out joined the party too. We hardly felt remote that day with 4 extra people to visit with there!

Heather and I and some of the local ladies are starting to plan a powderpuff run out here. Just a day snowmobile trip around here. Just for fun. There are lots of laughs to be had when everyone is together.

I was also thinking about packing up a few books and going up to the claim cabin by myself for a few days as a mini holiday. Now that trapping season is almost over there will be more time to do things like that. We will also take a family trip up there for a few days and tour around in the backcountry a bit. There are so many places around here to see this winter and time is flying way too fast so we had better make the time. I guess that is a good sign - time flies when you're having fun!