Porkies Mirror Lake adventures!

You got that right.  On Wednesday morning we headed west to the Porkies state park to hike in to a cabin on Mirror Lake.   We've done this many times over the years, but this time we'll stay at the 8 bunk cabin for the whole adventure.

We arrived to the trail head during a winter storm warning
....it wasn't so bad.

 

We loaded up and.....we're off!  The young buck had to haul
the kibble in.   It did not slow him down!

Ya, we go that way.

Good thing for the snow, it covered up the mud.
 It really was a muddy trek in.

Oh we love these hemlock forests.

Few inches of snow, but getting deeper as we neared the cabin.

Mirror Lake is the head waters of the Little Carp which starts here.

Made it!
Sandy perused the journal as we waited for the cabin
to warm up.

Us mutts ventured outside to find some adventure.

Oh ya, it's starting to snow more.

The lake is cooling down. We saw a skim of ice at the shore.

Lucky for us, the cabin had been stocked with lots
of very good fire wood.

It took several hours to warm up the cabin with the stove burning
 full blast burning lots of wood.

No way we could have stayed without that wood...
thanks to who-ever saved our vacation!

Tomorrow, we'll need to find, cut, and haul in more wood.
All part of the adventure...

Thursday morning -
with sun peeking through some lake-effect clouds.

Us mutts of course needed to check for adventure outdoors right away.

Ahh....did you know, I love the winter weather?

Yes, I recommend it.  It snowed really, really hard.

Now we headed out into the hemlocks to hunt for fire wood.

 

Behind the bluff we were able to find a good number of
down trees to harvest.

We'd bring a load in, then come in to warm up.
After a while, puppies need to nap.

Arly got lotsa practice with the crummy park issue bow saw.

Hey! I spied a chipmunk while she hauled another load in.

Lunch! You know we like cheese n bagels too right?

Never mind, we'll find something fresher.

After all the wood was in, we finally got to have some kibble.
I'm starve-n!

Pretty lame for hours of toil, eh? If only we'd brought a sled....

After looking through the journal, Sandy made an entry too.

More porkies adventures to follow.