Greetings and welcome!
It is pretty clear by now that our Summer in March is over. We had a nice weekend for weather with above normal temperatures, and that was great while it lasted.
Sunday night got colder than it has been in weeks. It was a clear sky and a cold air mass, and our temperature got down to 19 early Monday morning. The NWS put out freeze warnings to give everyone a heads up, but I am not sure that nature got the warning. I haven’t heard a frog in the pond since, and they were really loud over the weekend.
Some of that might not be all bad. The hope is that some of our peskier species were emerging with the early breeding stock, the mother ships if you will, and got killed off. The top two in that category would be the mosquito and the wood tick. So far I have only had the thee mosquitoes, but over the weekend I saw a swarm hovering by tree branches as they like to do.
Sunday I was taking the laundry off of the clothes line and about 2 minutes after I was out there I had four wood ticks crawling up my shins. I got those and a few more on my pants leg in the time that it took to take down one basket of clothes. My old cat found them too, and has one embedded in her neck. She doesn’t know it, but she is in for her first Frontline treatment of the season today. There was also a friend over the weekend that got a deer tick and the bull’s eye.
It would be a shame if the 19 degree night killed off a nice sized chunk of the mosquito and tick breeding populations, but that is probably wishful thinking.
Other bugs that I have encountered recently include a few moths, some little bugs that looked like mini-thunderbugs that were numerous by the river, a few spiders, and the paper wasp that I freed from between the window panes this morning.
Some tree species are getting pretty well along with their first leaves, and a lot of the grass is turning green. I saw some bulb based flowers emerging over the weekend. The surprise is that they were on the north side of a building where the sun doesn’t reach. Normally there would be a pile of ice and snow there for another month, along with frost in the ground.
People have reported seeing bears emerging from their dens, but I have not seen one yet. I kind of expected to see a lot of our hibernating wildlife like squirrels and chipmunks, skunks, badgers, and porcupines. If they are out, they are not common enough for me to encounter yet.
We started the whitewater rafting season over the weekend at Kosir’s. The weather was nice, the river was in the +12 range, and the water was a lot warmer than usual. We had groups run Saturday and Sunday afternoons, and there were a lot of good times to be had. They will be running trips again next weekend and are open for the season.
We had a group from Kayak Chicago join us on the river over the weekend. Not only were they very good boaters, they were really nice people and fun to be around. We are looking forward to their next visit. You will see a couple of them in the pictures..
Speaking of the water being warmer than normal, I heard from several people that the walleye run in the Peshtigo has already come and gone. I don’t know much about it, but that is what the guys that watch stuff like that were telling me.
The heating season is back. While I got away without having a fire in the wood stove many times over our warm two week stretch, it is back to normal now. It takes at least one daytime fire and two reloads overnight now. I think that last week I went three days between fires at one point.
The warm weather couldn’t last forever. Our normal high and low temperatures for today are 44 and 22 respectively. This week our high temps are predicted to range from the mid-40s to the low 60s. The lows after tonight are in the twenties and thirties. There is a chance of rain today through tomorrow, and again Friday. The weekend looks nice for weather, but on the cool side with temps in the 50s and low 60s.
Here are the weekend events
| Mar. 30-21 | Twin Bridge Area | 3rd Annual Indoor Mini-Golf Tournament Click here for details |
| Mar. 31 | The Woods Restaurant Newton Lake Rd & Kottke Rd |
Town of Stephenson Fire Dept. Auxiliary Chicken Dinner Dinner from 5 to 7 PM – Music to follow |
The mini-golf tournament has been a fun event. You mini-golf a different hole at each trail stop, and you can start at any of them. The tournament is Friday night and Saturday, and the awards & prizes are given out at Caldron Falls Bar Saturday night. There will be food, golf tournament prizes, and door prizes.
Also Saturday night the Town of Stephenson Fire Dept. Auxiliary Chicken Dinner sounds inviting. As I recall it was food, beer, and a band for under $10, and a good time for a good cause.
That looks like a wrap for me today. Have a good week and thank you for visiting!
RJB