We spent a few days up at Beartrax again this year over the 4th.  My brother and his wife run the store that is open 365 days a year, 6:30 to  6:30 every day.  Of course they have lots of good help but as this is a very busy time for them, we go up to help where we can.  We tried to make sure they had hot meals on the table at the end of the day and something to eat during the day to keep their energy up.  Their home is in the back of the store so we go there to make the meals and for a little break.  We also did a little baby sitting while we were there, here is Gary watching over a couple of the kids The gray and black one is a border collie called YooHoo and he is deaf!.  They have taught him hand signals for things like, “go potty”, “sit”, “come” and “down”.  When they first got him, they would take a flash light with them when they would let him out at night.  When it was time to come in, they turned the flash light on so he’d come over to them to investigate the light.  Of course having a few more dogs around helped in the training as he could just follow the pack.  I think they are prejudice.  All they have are black and white dogs, 3 border collies, 1 cocker spaniel and an older poodle.  Not a Golden in sight!  Hrumph!

While we were up there, there were fires up in Canada.  As Beartrax is located close to Brainerd, we were kinda close to the Canadian border so it was real smokey up there.

That is smoke, not fog

We are used to seeing fog on the water, not smoke on the street.  Here are a couple of shots of the sun

Cool huh?  I had to zoom up to get those shots.  Love my zoom :).

Well, we had a great time “helping” the people at Beartrax (I even got to work the credit card machine 🙂 ).  Hopefully they will invite us back next year.  Now it is back down to the Twin Cities to see what kind of mischief we can get into there.