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We had a great family snowmobile trip to Land O' Lakes, WI from 12/27-12/31. The trails were smooth and the weather was perfect. We hadn't been able to get the whole family together for a few years, so that made it extra nice. We stayed at the Sunrise Lodge, which is right on Lac Vieux Desert, which is a pretty large lake on the Wisconsin / Michigan border. We stay in a two-story house, complete with our own fireplace and homemade cookies from the owners!
Of course, the vacation couldn't go off without a hitch - we had an adventure our first day of riding! Since our family downsized from four to two sleds, we rented 2 brand new '08 Ski-Doo Freestyle snowmbiles from Ramesh Motorsports in LOL. They were right out of the box with Zero miles on them. Both were great sleds and my mom and I really enjoyed them. In fact, I was thinking about telling dad he should buy one for his "next" sled (with my dad, there's always a "next" sled right around the corner! 😊 ) It's not the fastest sled out there, but for me, I loved the way it ran, and I
definitely didn't need to go any faster than I did!
We rode to Boulder Junction for lunch and on our way back to Land O'Lakes, my sled stopped running a couple times and then started running rough. Dad checked the plugs and one was kind of black, but not wet and since we had no spares anyway, dad decided to have Brett ride it and try to limp it home to the Rental place. After about 5 miles of 30mph limping, Brett felt his feet getting hot. He was going (sloooowly) up a hill, and suddenly, I saw fire coming from underneath the sled! He turned back to look at me, and I was waving my hands like a maniac, telling him to get off the sled. Within seconds, the fire took off. We've never seen or heard of this happening in all our years of riding and, as of today, we still have no idea what caused it.
The fire took over 45 minutes to slow down, and start to get quiet. During that time, we all just stood around looking at it. Dad was riding first, so he missed the beginning fun. It was only when
he looked behind him and saw no one else was following him, that he turned around to see what was up. He assumed the sled had just broken down again, but instead, stopped by a couple of riders that were watching it burn at the top of the hill, and saw the bonfire. Everyone that stopped by us was completely amazed, and tons of people were taking pictures. In fact, we found out a couple of weeks later that we were in the local newspaper! One large group of friends decided to take a group photo in front of the fire, and even asked us to get in the picture! lol...
Fortunately, no one was hurt in the fire, but my dad was slightly injured. . As the fire was burning down, (after about 40 minutes of blazing), dad decided to throw snow on it to put it out. My mom told him not to, said that something from the fire might jump out. Of course, my dad did it anyways. And of course, when he did, something popped and shot a piece of something directly into his left eye. After spending the next three days putting eye drops
into the eye and dealing with blurred vision, on the way home he went to our friend who happens to be an eye doctor and had him look at it. He said there was a slight laceration to the cornea which should heal completely. He was lucky. It could have been a lot worse. although mom does get to say "told ya so!"
I guess it's true - Snowmobiling's always an adventure, especially with our family!!
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