NWTF

I had never heard of the NWTF, when Friday afternoon my buddy called and asked if I would like to go to a dinner for them.  I asked, "What does NWTF stand for?"  He replied, "National Wild Turkey Federation."  Ahhh that made sense.  I did not know Northern Michigan had a NWTF chapter.  They are the Little Traverse Bay Gobblers.  It was some free food so I snagged the wife Saturday afternoon and we met my friend and went to the dinner.  It was not that bad!  We were very over dressed for the occasion.  We had been to a Roffed Grouse Society dinner a few years ago...there is a big difference in the crowd that each group brings in.  However, there were still many upstanding people at the banquet...and none of them were afraid to show their passion for the NWTF.  Most of the auction items went for between $200 and $300.  The dinner tickets were $60 for single and $90 for double.  There were other little sales/auctions in between the major items and they went well as well.  Overall, I imagine they did very well.  Even I won something!  Nothing big, but a door prize of $10 for the new Parks Place Cafe in Conway.  In one of the blog postings I wrote about our North Country Trail trip...and we passed a place called Beach's Log Cabin.  They sold and now the place belongs to Charles Parks.  (Sorry if I am missing an E in Parks.)  He owns the funeral home a couple miles south from the restaurant.  I imagine we will be checking it out soon...I will give a full review once I have been there!

It has turned out to be a beautiful day.  For a few minutes last night I thought I was going to regret putting my snowmobile away!  We had a few flakes of snow falling around 9:30 PM last night.  It was in the mid 30s and trying to rain...but a little bit of the moisture fell in frozen form.  I did have to get the wood furnace fired up again today...I was hesitant because of how windy it is but I let it rip anyway.  I do not want to use any more gas than I have to this year.  We have lasted the entire winter on one tank of propane.  That includes a few days of laziness, all the times we were not here for a couple days, and all of the mornings when the fire had just used itself up overnight.  I personally think one tank is not that bad!  They came and filled it I believe in September or October last year.  So 8-9 months on one tank...not too shabby.  We did put a note on the tank not to fill it during the winter...it was a constant reminder to me that I needed to use wood and not burn the gas furnace.  I would say it worked!  On a normal winter we would probably have gone through 2-3 tanks.  I am proud of us because this was one of the longest and coldest winters in quite some time.  It was a darn good thing that I cut and extra row of wood though! ;)

I got wind of some potential golfing today...I have not heard anything yet but I will see how it pans out.  I have been trying to get something together for a few weeks now...I have not practiced at all yet. :P  Why ruin what might be a few good hits by confusing myself with how to hold the club all over again?  I was going to spend this summer having fun...golfing (both ball and disc), hiking, camping, etc.  If I end up buying a house...probably disc golfing and hiking will be my only spots to partake in.  They are free! :P

Anyway, enough out of me for now.  I am going to try to get the OutdoorsMI Cam back up at some point...my computer that runs it has been out of commission for a while.  I will hurry that process along if I can.  I might try to do something wireless so that I can put a cam in the woods.  That would be fun.  

Good morning from Northern Michigan!

-Derek