June 2016

Wednesday 6/29/16

Greetings and welcome!
It has been a busy little world around here so I haven’t escaped much this week. Saturday afternoon I took Chris for a ride in the car that lasted about 20 minutes each way. On the way back we didn’t see much, but on the way there we saw rabbits, birds, a bear, and a wobbly legged fawn. Not bad.

I have been working on the boat here and there and hope to take that out this weekend. We will have a great weekend for it according to my guidance. What I am seeing is a big area of high pressure camping over WI like a painted on bull’s eye. That should bring us clear weather, normal winds, and comfortable temperatures. I would expect daytime high temps around 80, and night time lows around 50. For a 4th of July weekend that is about as good as it gets.

There are rain chances Thursday and next Tuesday. That is about it. The Thursday afternoon and evening rain looks like it could bring a decent amount as storms roll through. I have seen guidance that shows our area getting mostly passed by, and some that said 1/2″-1″ or more. It will be good to give the land a drink to reduce fire danger for the weekend and boost water levels a touch, and it is well timed as far as the weekend goes.

Events this weekend…

6/30-7/3 Norway 125th Celebration – A big all weekend event with lots of live music and attractions. Bounce houses/carnival type festivities, food & drink tents, a lumberjack show and much, much more! Big name music stars!

Saturday July 2nd

July 2  Lake Noquebay –Crivitz Ski Cats Water Ski Show and fireworks. Starts at 6:30pm

July 2 High Falls Flowage- Boat Landing #3 Twin Bridge Ski Team Water Ski Show and fireworks. Starts at 6:30pm

July 2 Wausaukee Independence Day Celebration
5K Run/Walk, Parade, kids games, tournaments, Food, Beer, Beverages, Entertainment, Spectacular Fireworks. Details at Wausaukee.com

July 2 Mountain Fireworks Celebration- Craft show starts at 9am. Horseshoes, music, pool tournament, water fights, live music, and fireworks.

July 2 Crooked Lake Sportsman’s Club Annual Picnic- 11am-7pm Food, music(3-7), raffles, games, money pit, and trout pond for the kids.

July 4

Crivitz Independence Day Celebration.
Flag Raising at Village Hall at 10:45am followed by Parade at 11am.
Flea Market downtown. At the Park starting at noon there will be food & refreshments, kids activities, DJ from noon to 6pm, and the Brass Differential Band at 6:15pm. Fireworks at 9:30pm.

Townsend Centennial 4th of July Celebration–  Parade at noon, fireworks at dusk.

July 9
Athelstane Fireman’s Parade & Picnic
Parade Line up at 10:30 am at C & A – Picnic to follow at Fireman’s Park

That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it. Have a fun and safe weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Greetings and welcome!

Summer is now under way and with the summer solstice a few days behind us the days are now getting shorter. For now it is ok, I don’t mind sunset 8:53. That leaves an hour or two after work to get stuff done. We lost a minute of daylight today when the sun rose at 5:23 instead of a minute earlier.

Wildlife has been easy to spot this week on my ride to and from work. For some reason there are a lot of critters in the ditches. This morning on the way to work I spotted a buck with maybe 4″ of antlers and a knot on the top of each one ready to branch. That was probably the highlight of the week. There have been a lot of birds, chippys, squirrels, porcupines, skunks, and rabbits, and a lot of deer. As a result there has been a lot of road pizza too. Keep your eyes peeled for critters if you are out driving. They seem particularly active this week.

We have a hot and steamy weekend ahead, and a chance of some storms Saturday night. There is a fairly strong area of low pressure to our northwest up in Canada. As that gets closer we will be in the river of warm moist air being drawn up from the south.

Right now the GFS and the NWS  & TV forecasts are predicting that the storms will come mostly Saturday night, and they could be some good ones. The GFS QPF is showing me that we could see 0.5-0.75″ of rain by Monday. That doesn’t sound too bad, but there are areas less than 100 miles away that are shown getting 1-1.5″ or more. That isn’t a big margin of error 48 hours out. As always, be ready for anything, but don’t let it ruin your weekend. It is just a forecast.

We have some events coming up this weekend. Here is the list from Chris’ event page on Northern Destinations.

June 25
2nd Annual Pig Roast at Parkway Inn & Resort, starts at 1:00 PM

June 25
Bear Point Annual Fishing Tournament
100% Payout – 2 Persons per boat – 18 boat Maximum – Visit Website for Details

June 26
2016 Marinette County Breakfast on the Farm.
Visit website for full details.

And one that I heard about on the radio..

Next weekend 6/30-7/3 Norway 125th Celebration – A big event with lots of live music and attractions

Norway, MI is just across the Menominee River from Kosir’s Rafting Menominee River outpost on Hwy 8 East.

Last Saturday evening I escaped for a little white and went to my favorite sunset spot for a little time in the water, a cold beer, and a few sunset pictures. I met some web site visitors there and enjoyed seeing them. There was a loon that popped up every little while, fishermen and kayakers, and a nice night for the show.

None of these pictures were color corrected at all. It was all aperture & shutter speed, and a beautiful sunset of course.  I resized them for a 1920px desktop background, down from 300 to 72dpi,  hit the sharpen button once and saved them at a fairly low compression.  Enjoy!

Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Thursday 6/16/2016

Greetings and welcome!

We have a nice weekend coming up and a lot to talk about.

The weekend ahead is expected to have mostly clear weather and mid-80s for high temperatures. My first thought is that it will be a good campfire weekend. With partly cloudy skies and low temperatures around 60 it should be very comfortable.

Warm weather will also drive us to the water. With our recent rain the whitewater rafting is highly recommended. Both the Peshtigo and Menominee Rivers are at very fun levels. For those not into the thrill, it will make tubing better too. Not only is the water higher, but the river is warming up from the rain.

That same high water will make a waterfall tour a good call this weekend.

The Muscle Maniacs will have a nice weekend for their car show in Lakewood this weekend. There will be some top notch cars there, check it out if it is in your travels.

In nature this week the raspberries continue to bloom, though not quite as much as last week. Also making a strong showing this week were patches of white daisies along the roadsides. I have seen pretty many snapping turtles up on the roads as they seek a sandy spot to lay eggs. I went to take pictures of one Sunday, and it wasn’t a snapper at all.

I took the boat out on Caldron for an hour Sunday afternoon. It needed a shakedown run and I learned about plenty to fix. It was mostly about the boat so I only fished for about 10 minutes. and don’t have any fish to show off. Not yet.

Speaking of going out on Caldron Falls, Kosir’s Rafting has a sweet pontoon boat that they take people out on. It can hold 13, and it is something like $20 to go. I was on one ride, and it was great. Check it out.

For now, have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB

4/8/2016

Greetings and welcome!

We had a cold night last night with clear skies and cold air behind another storm. The coldest that I saw locally was Wabeno that posted 34, and Athelstane weather that marked 37. There was a frost advisory out for areas north and west of here, but Marinette Co was not included. My windshield was damp with dew this morning, but it was not frozen as of 5am when I went out to check on it.

Even if it didn’t freeze hard, it still isn’t ideal for plants and gardens to get into the 30s. My rule of thumb is that you shouldn’t plant anything that you can’t bring inside before June 10th. While the average last frost datae is around Memorial Day, I had my gardens frosted up more than once in the first week in June. I am sticking to my guns on June 10th as the last frost day. By my recollection, I have only had one hard frost after that date, but quite a few the week before it.

The weather the past few weekends hasn’t been ideal, but they haven’t been total washouts either. I recall some nice days between the rain showers and storms. Probably the worst that I have seen this year was Saturday night of Memorial Day weekend. We had one storm blow through that was really raining hard with some strong winds. I opened my door in the thick of it to pull the storm door shut and in about two seconds I had a river of water running across the floor.

This weekend looks better, but only after a good soaking Friday night. There will be some warm humid air in place, so the storms could get a little rowdy. There are no watches or warnings yet. I do expect things to clear up Saturday morning and give way to a warm but nice weekend.

The unsettled weather has brought some pretty spectacular sunsets. This one was Sunday evening of Memorial Day weekend. Last night looked pretty nice with the clouds behind the storm. I meant to go to the lake with the camera, but got sucked into other things once I got home. I recall looking out of the window about 8:30 and seeing some colorful clouds being bottom lit by the sun and groaning about not being there for it.

The generous rain over the past few weeks has been good for the area. The whitewater rivers and waterfalls are in great shape for the coming weekend. Things that are green and growing are prospering, and now the raspberry bushes are in bloom adding a floral twist. I also haven’t heard the words Fire Danger in a few weeks.

In my daily travels the gators (mosquitoes) haven’t been too bad, but they are certainly present. I recall them coming out of the bushes after us when we went for the sunset Memorial Day weekend. I have only had a few ticks so far, but that might be a product of me not getting out enough. One quick trip into the tall grass to retrieve something yielded 3 in about 2 minutes. Bring Repel.

Last weekend I spotted one of the local fawns. Chris saw the Momma deer, and I told her to wait a minute and the fawn would come out of the bushes. Sure enough, the rowdy little fawn made an appearance only moments later. I got a few pictures through the kitchen window, and here are a couple to share.

At work I have a front seat view of the road construction on 141 in Wausaukee. Right now only northbound traffic is on the old road, and southbound traffic is being routed onto the western frontage road like they did when they rebuilt the bridge. This time they are getting a wider road through town, sidewalks, curbs and storm water management. There will be no road parking downtown when they are done, opening things up a little.

I keep reminding people that the construction of passing lanes on 141 between Wausaukee and the 4 lane near Beaver was a hassle last summer, now I don’t know how we got by without them. Hopefully there will be some gain for the pain on this project too.

As usual my time is up before I am really done, but here we are. Have a good week and thank you for visiting,
RJB