I arrived in Saint Raymond yesterday. The total trip was just about 1,000 miles from home. This is really pretty country here, very hilly and rural. And lots of snow! Originally I planned to ride from here to Riviere du Loup in the Gaspe Peninsula where the guided tour is going to start, but I stopped at this snowmobile dealer to pick up my 7 day Quebec trail permit ($180, ouch) and after going over the map with the guys at the dealership I found out that it would be about a 400+ km ride (around 250 miles). This, by myself, before starting a 1,200 mile tour on Sunday seemed like a bit much, so I've decided to drive the truck and trailer to Riviere du Loup. The people I've met so far have all been ... read more

The next morning was Saturday morning. Originally, had we been able to go to Land O' Lakes, WI, we were planning to attend the Frosty Snowmobile Club's Radar runs at Bent's Camp Resort on Mamie Lake west of LandO. One of the highlights of this event is the bikini run with girls wearing bikinis riding the high speed 1000' run on snowmobiles. They do it to raise money for breast cancer. We considered driving the 65 miles down there to see it, but since the trails there were now dirt and the trails up here are fantastic, we chose to stay up here and ride. We only received about 2-3 inches of snow, but the groomers were doing a heck of a job of churning up the snow and flattening out the trails, resulting in great ... read more

It barely got down to 32 overnight, but everything was a bit crispy. After such a warm day before, we knew we couldn't go too far south, so we decided to point the sleds north and squeezed the throttles. We headed up Trial 3, the Bill Nichols Trail, the super slab of snowmobile trails. 60 mph sustained speeds are easy to do on this great trail. Once again, the trail was groomed overnight and was very smooth. We rode up to Houghton about 25 miles north of Twin Lakes and crossed the bridge across the Portage Channel into Hancock. Once again, the temperature climbed into the 40's and it was a bright, sunny day. We chose to continue north on Trail 3 through Lake Linden and then toward the city of Calumet, where we gassed up ... read more

Last year in Cabo, we tried a little fishing for Marlin and Sailfish, which was a total bust, but that's to be expected in big game fishing. So, this time we booked a 1/2 day fishing charter with the goal of "action" fishing. We didn't care about really big fish, we just wanted to catch something since neither of us had done much fishing in our lives. We were hoping to catch something we could have cooked for our dinner at a restaurant. So we booked a relatively small boat, the Eagle Eye, a 26 foot boat, manned by Capt. Jim Perry. He was a real nice guy, except for the fact that he was a Cub fan. Growing up in Marathon, he watched the Cubs on WGN since he was a kid. He has my ... read more

When we were getting ready to leave Chicago, I told Jan that I didn't care if we did anything down here except lay around and relax. Well, we're doing plenty of that! The weather has been better than the 10 day forecasts were saying last week at home. It was in the high 80's Friday when we arrived and Saturday through Monday it was in the low 80's and SUNNY each day. As much as I love winter snow and snowmobiling, the one thing I hate and I guess we all hate in the northern climes during the winter is the abundance of gray overcast days. The sunny clear weather is a tonic for the soul. The forecast for Tuesday was for a cool day, with a high of 71, so we decided that would be ... read more