Strange Winter.........March 30, 2017

I have been busy lately ~ enjoying Mother Nature's craziness.   I sometimes don't know what to think, from one day to the next, about this weather.  One day, I need long johns.  The next day I don't.  The lake is almost always rough.  I just decided to go with what ever the day brings and really enjoy it.  On this particular morning ~ I was enjoying a sunrise from "my" ice cave I discovered on the shore of Lake Superior.   I had been trying to get in there for this type of experience ever since the warming trend and the bigger icicles melted out of the hole.  I could now get in here ~ if......and that's a big if........the lake would settle down.   I had tried to get into it a few mornings earlier when some promise of color ~ which failed to materialize ~ looked promising.  

Here I am, part way in the hole, on a morning of a slight pink color up in a narrow band on the horizon.  It lasted a few minutes ~ but, not much.  Enough waves I couldn't get all the way in the hole, as you can see.  A few days later, most of the nice icicles had been all melted off and just a few stubby ones remained.  It was after sunrise, but I was going to have a try at it anyway.   I got drenched.  A bigger waves came in right over the top of me.  Luckily, I was in full rain gear and blew dry in the wind in just a few minutes.  Things like this don't happen all the time ~ so, I was really hoping Mother Nature would cooperate.  :)

Here's a view of the icicles before the storms broke them all off.  The heavy outside ones had melted off, finally, so I could see out thru them.   I barely had any room inside either.   So, with some melting came the ability to get in there.  However, I still needed the lake to settle down so I and my camera didn't get drenched.

Here's a photo taken from outside of it on the day I got drenched.  See the more stubby, short icicles.   I hadn't stood here watching long enough to know how big the waves were in this little cove that day. Needless to say ~ I got a surprise.  It was a good northeast wind and the waves weren't as big as I have seen them here.  However, I guess I hadn't been here with that wind direction before.  So ~ I was caught totally by surprise.   Anyway ~ it's all fun!
The warm spell has put an end to my traveling all over heck in the woods to a stop too.  That extreme warm spell and rain, followed by quite cold weather, made the snow hard as rock out there.  Boy, Betsy and I were up the hills and over the swamps and really made tracks ~ because we could.   One spot on the east shady end of a tall hill, in a gap where a creek ran thru, didn't get the message.  It was soft in there and I was in up to my butt in the snow.  Had to crawl on my hands and knees a short ways to a deer trail to get going again.  Mind you, I was in my running shoes.  It's always a blast while it lasts.
Anyway ~ I've been busy having too much fun.   Hope you are too!