March 24, 2013 No end in sight...where winter is concerned.

On Thursday, the 21st of March, our ladies group went snowshoeing again.  Some had wanted me to take them in to a creek with a tall falls east of where I live.  Well, we have had more winter in March than we had earlier....so.....snowshoeing is more work now.  Since some of them aren't aren't as young as they used to be......are any of us?!.....I wasn't so sure I wanted to be responsible for making them work that hard.  That is a hike in to there....anytime.  But, especially so with serious snow conditions.
At any rate, I suggested we hike the whole section of the Lake Superior Hiking Trail,  lakewalk section and see the nice ice formations.  I figured that would be easier going.  There hadn't been anyone on it since the last snow.  So.....tho there were places we could have gotten by without them, a good share of the way did require snowshoes.  For this late in March, Lake Superior's shore had a lot of snow.  Above, shows the wolf tracks that we followed down most of the couple of miles of beach we hiked on.

Here is a photo of some of the neat designs and shadows that appeared on one drifted section of beach.  I thought it was very pretty and quite striking.  It definitely was noticeable.   We found quite a few things of interest on our  beach walk.   In fact, it was nice to see a few other people noticing and appreciating some of the details I am always on the lookout for.  There is so much there, if you can see and appreciate it. 
Below, you will notice another neat piece of standing ice.  It had such pretty markings on the ice besides the fact the shadow had a really dark outline with bright light showing inside of that.  On my Moose Valley Photography page, someone mentioned it looked like a butterfly.  I hadn't thought of that. However, everyone had a different idea of what something looks like or what they see in a given image.  I found that one so interesting I  walked all the way around it and took photos from all sides and angles.  All of them were interesting.  It just depends on what you really like.  It takes too much space to print them all to show you what I mean.  But, yes, it was a neat ice form.

Then, there was this lovely ice gem I found.  I only took three shots of this.  But, I will show you the closest up shot I took.  I thought it just lovely as did the rest of the ladies.

Sometimes, when the huge caves and icicles are melting away, some of the little details that are left are just as beautiful.  The design in this little ice gem was extremely rare to find. 

I will leave you with a photo of our group this gorgeous day.  A fine time was had by all.   :)