Gifts, Northern Lights, and Lynx

We got back from the gift show on Tuesday.  It is held several times a year at the Umaga Center in Minneapolis.  We usually go to the March show because it features gifts for resorts.  It takes us 4 days.  The first two days are spent looking at all the showrooms and temporary booths.  As we go through a list is kept of things we may be interested in buying.  The last two days are spent placing orders by reviewing each place on the list.  Things are always added and subtracted.

The one who knows the most about what we have is April from the front desk.  She has reviewed our catalogs and orders from last year.  Then she looks at what it left.  It is nothing we could not all do but April actually does the job.  Also she gives us the viewpoint of another generation.

The point of all this is to remind you to save your money.  Plan to spend some time and money in the gift shop on you visit here.  I am sure there will be something on the shelves that you just can’t live without.

Monday Mike from the front desk drove down the Gunflint Trail.  Near the Tucker Lake Road he saw a large lynx.  We never saw lynx here when I first came up.  Within the last 5-6 years they are regularly seen on the South Gunflint Lake road.  Also we have seen a dwindling population of snowshoe hares.  I must admit that my garden and I do not miss rabbits.  Squirrels and chipmunks are bad enough but rabbits can really make a mess of the garden.  They especially like new leaves on green beans.

A couple years ago I put in this blog a wonderful picture of a lynx at the Gunflint narrows.  One of our guests took the picture by being at the right place with a camera at the right time.  Look back at the blogs a couple years ago to see this magnificent animal.

I was talking with Chris our bartender today.  Last night about midnight he looked out his window so see some northern lights.  He said that they just exploded across the sky.  The lights swirled and the colors changed.  By the time he got a jacket and went out with a camera, they were gone.

So, I have decided to look myself tonight.  Of course last night was a clear sky and tonight will probably be overcast.  Then there is the question of waking up without waking Bruce.  That is almost impossible so we will both be shivering looking out the north windows.  Next week if I don’t write about northern lights or have a picture of them, you will know that the whole thing was a disaster.  Don’t ask what happened.