Another day at the lake

Saturday, noonish, Karl and I headed to Wayfarer’s State Park for a walk on the beach. I was surprised to find the parking area filled with trucks and boat trailers. There is still not much of a parking area as the primary day use parking has not been plowed. On this day, every spot designated for vehicle and trailer was full as well as every other plowed spot.

The Jeep, though, is no stranger to snow, so we parked in the day lot, in the snow. Two men near were readying a fishing boat so I asked about the “crowd”. There is a fishing tournament on. It is a yearly thing. They laughed at my saying that I was surprised at the number of boaters on a cold, gray day: “Any day is a good day to fish” was their reply. They went on to tell me that they were not in the tournament, but that they recognized most of the trucks and trailers as friends of theirs that were participating.

Karl and I walked toward the lake and watched them launch on an icy ramp. It was relatively warm at 36 but the combination of snow on the road and ramp, water splashing as each launched…and a few were already done for the day and pulling out, made the ramp very icy. 4wd and chains were the order of the day.

But aside from the boat launch, Karl and I had the rest of the park to ourselves.

Another day at the lake.

Small Town Doin’s

As a small business person (VERY small…sole proprietor and only person) I joined the Bigfork Chamber of Commerce when I moved to Bigfork in late 2002. The Chamber is active in many community functions and organizes most of them. Decoration Day at Christmas time is one of the many. Coming up are “Clean our Fork” which is a turn out for spring litter pick up – we meet at one of the local members’ for a pancake breakfast, are assigned areas to pick up and off we go. Just like Decoration Day, enough turn out that we “git er done” in short order and then we meet again for lunch… All activities include food and drink – we don’t do anything hungry or thirsty!

It is a fun group! The nature of Bigfork’s topography is such that there is very little “town” housing. Most of us live rurally in the surrounding area. Chamber functions as well as town functions are always well attended.

Once a month, the Chamber has a “Sundowner”. A Chamber business hosts an open house with food and drink, naturally. Starting at 5 p.m. we gather, eat, sip and talk, share announcements about new or expanding services, promotions, upcoming events and finish with a small raffle for prizes donated by the host.

Yesterday evening was this month’s Sundowner, hosted by the Bigfork branch of Rocky Mountain Bank.

The bank is right next to the Chamber office and those poor people in the bank look towards the lake all day while they are working…you can see a bit of the lake past the Dairy Queen sign in the first photo. The Diary Queen gets a bit of the view also as do a number of businesses, including another bank that “step” down the grade along Montana Highway 35.

And that temperature of 26??? It made us all giddy with relief after the last several days of arctic cold. And 26 was at just after 6 p.m. – sunset is 7:40ish right now. We were all smiles and “hey, it is almost Spring” as we gathered.

Although Karl did not come in for the festivities, he did ride along in the Jeep. We arrived home, passing our UPS guy on the way and found he had been to our house…

And he didn’t forget Karl!

Small Town doin’s – I love it all!

Procrastination

Yesterday morning started at barely 3F. It was gusty and the 4-5 inches of snow that had fallen since I last cleared the driveway was blowing around. I didn’t have to go anywhere and no deliveries were expected so I decided to wait for the wind to die down and hopefully a bit more warmth before playing with the snowblower again.

The sun came out, the wind quit and it did warm up to about 14F – by 4 p.m. Karl and I set out on a snowshoe/walk – too nice to be snowblowing!

We had taken a short walk in the morning, but it was overcast and blustery. This afternoon walk was wonderful. The wind had blown the new snow into such smooth contours that it looked like a painting of snow. It was such a soft, pretty look to the landscape that I hated to make tracks through it.

We dawdled. Karl took a break to clean ice balls from between his toes…it’s a problem! Often, he will stop and hold one paw piteously in the air and wait for me to get to him and fix it. Today, though, he decided he would do it all by himself!

Back at the house, I took a look at the driveway and thought that I should probably fire up the snowblower and clean things up. So I fired up the grill and cooked some hamburgers for my dinner…

About the time I was thinking that the snowblowing could wait until morning, my neighbor arrived…in his tractor-backhoe! He had emailed me the night before saying he was going to work on his and his adjoining neighbor’s drives and did I want a clean up. Thinking I was going to clear my own drive in the morning, I emailed that back but asked if he could clear the end of my drive if the county plow had been by and blocked it in.

Mike works for the county road department and up until this year not only was our road on his plowing route, but the county sent him home with the plow so he plowed the road on his way out, i.e. first thing. This year his route was changed, some “stranger” is plowing our road and the county is low on funds after last summer’s gas prices. Plowing all over the valley is not what it was.

All to say, that Mike KNOWS how to run a plow – tractor – backhoe (see the great garden trade ) and as he came up the driveway, I congratulated myself on my uncharacteristic procrastination.

As I’m preparing this post, Wednesday morning … it is 2 below zero. Bundling up to go out with Karl on a short walk is one thing. Flinging powdery snow around that has a tendency to drift back on me is quite another – thanks Neighbor!!

It ain’t over yet…

Winter, it is not over yet. We’ve had three nights of snowing and blowing – the blowing being not so bad at my home as I am again in a bit of a wind shadow. Arctic cold spilled over the Continental Divide as forecast and it is considerably colder – at 3F – this morning than is usual for March 10.

Yesterday after a snowy, windy start, the sun came out and made for a brilliantly, beautiful walk.

Karl waited…

I cleaned up…

It was not windy when I was snowblowing, but when the snow is so light and powdery it “drifts” everywhere, mostly on to the snowblower and the snowblower operator – that is my new black hat and the snowblower is mostly black. It was as cold as it looks at about 17F.

We will reprise this operation later today – hopefully it will be above 10.

This Winter, it ain’t over yet!