NorthernDestinations.com

Welcome Back!! 3-19-2021

Greetings and welcome!

Time to dust off the summer blog and bring people up to date.

We are well into the mud season. The frost is coming out of the ground in sunny areas, and shaded areas still hold snow and ice.

The snowmobile trails are all closed now, and as of last Friday all of the ATV trails in Marinette County are closed as well. Usually ATV trails re-open the first or second weekend of May. That all depends on how fast that the ground dries out. Road weight limits (road bans) are in place for most of the area.

If you see cars parked at the end of driveways and barriers up mud season is why. If took the truck up the driveway in peak mud season I could make ruts a foot deep, and without some momentum, it would be easy to get stuck. My secret, when I can, is to go up the driveway after a cold night when the top couple of inches has refrozen.

We had an awful winter for snowmobiling. Our biggest storm was about 8-9” and there wasn’t much in the way of small snows either. I would guess our total snowfall at about 3 feet when it should be five or six. We had a total of three weekends with open snowmobile trails.

We have had some interesting weather lately. A storm came through late last week that brought rain and fog. At the tail end of the storm we actually had heavy rain and thunderstorms.

When the cold front came through it brought some very strong winds. The initial blast was a huge roar, that I would guess at 50+mph, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it were closer to 70. The power went out immediately, but the heroes at the WPS line crews had it fixed in about 90 minutes. The next couple of days were pretty windy, and unfortunately one of them was an otherwise nice day in the 50s.

That spring wind has always been an annoyance of mine. You get a nice sunny 55 or 60 degree day and you go outside excited about doing yard clean-up or other tasks, and there is a stiff cold wind. It is just the way that spring days happen around here. I don’t get too mad about it because there isn’t much that I can change about it. I’m just happy that it isn’t -20 and windy like that.

There have been a couple of nights with northern lights lately, and pictures on Facebook show that they were pretty visible last night. I haven’t been watching for that too much lately because we are in a grand solar minimum. I guess that I need to pay closer attention. From what I have heard we have a decent chance of some northern lights this weekend.

Whitewater rafting should be good this spring even though there isn’t massive snow melt runoff. If you check some of my posts from last fall you will see that I was warning deer hunters that low areas were really full of water.

When winter came the watershed and aquifer that feed the Peshtigo were really flooded with water. A lot of that water is still frozen deep in the forests of the headwaters. All of that water will make a very solid base flow as it slowly melts.

No matter what happens with the rain or snow melt, the river will be at good levels this spring. Right now without a lot of melt water hitting the river it is running at almost +12”. On a warm day it will spike.

Kosir’s usually starts spring rafting the first weekend of April. That weekend you can run both trips down the river for the price of one trip. Check with them for details.

There two events coming up-

We have some new businesses coming to the area.

First up there is a new Dollar General at the corner of X and Kottke Rd across from Country Convenience. That was a winter build and I guess that they are open for business.

Next up I saw on FaceBook this morning that there will be new owners of Vacationland Fun Park, and they hope to open in May. That is the place with the mini-golf and bumper boats across from Sportsman’s Cafe on Hwy X just east of Popp’s. Good luck!

There are big excavators and bulldozers and other heavy equipment on the east side of Hwy 141 in Crivitz just a little south of McDonald’s. They are there to build a new Quick Trip gas station.

I see that there is a new lock-up room coming to the old Ellis Junction restaurant kitty corner to Gateway Bar in Crivitz. That is one of those deals where you need to use clues to solve the mystery to unlock the room and escape.

I also heard a rumor that Cellcom will be bringing 5G cell service to the area this summer. Hopefully this time they will build it big enough that the network doesn’t go down every weekend.

I also got notification that Star-Link will be available in the area this summer. That is Elon Musk’s constellation of low orbit sattelites that supposedly will bring us 150Mb-400Mb internet. It is $99 a month with a $500 box and $89 shipping. I signed up as a beta tester and they let me know that I can place my order and get hooked up sometime this summer.

That would be a welcome addition to the area. The internet options around here are poor or none. A lot of people would love to remote work from the area but the lack of reliable internet is always the deal killer. Hopefully Star-Link will be the answer.

Well it is a sunny 60 degree day outside and the wind ISN’T howling for a change. I am off to go and be a part of it.

Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Saturday 12-12-2020

Greetings and welcome!

I only have two quick updates here today. One is the details on tonight’s Christmas parade in Crivitz.

Crivitz Christmas parade is December 12th.
Start time will be 5:30pm with line up starting at 5:00 on Wilbert St.
(Route: Wilbert St to Henriette Ave to George St to Hall Hay) Parade will end at the elementary school parking lot.

Judging will be based on lighting and theme layout of float!

And here is the link.

https://www.crivitz.com/crivitzEvent.php?details=1089

Item two is that I am closing up shop here for the winter and moving to the Big Snow Page. There I do all of the stuff that I do here but with a focus toward snowmobiling. Right now I am not updating much because there aren’t many events and there is no hope of snow until at least Christmas. Once the snow comes I will update a lot more often.

Big Snow Page Link

Thank you for visiting!
RJB.

Thursday November 19th, 2020

Greetings and welcome!

This weekend is the opening of the 9 day gun deer season in Wisconsin. From all indications that I have it will busier than it has been in past years.

Last weekend was unusually busy around here. Part of it was that Michigan’s deer season opened last weekend. Part of it was likely people coming around here getting things ready for this weekend.

People are obviously getting a head start. When I tried to use my Verizon based internet this morning before 7am it was already slow. At 8am it was worse than dial-up. That means that a lot of people are already here. That also means that we are probably in for a weekend where cell phone based internet is completely useless (like Cellcom & Verizon).

This week got colder than our delightful 70 degree weather a week or so ago. Ponds started getting ice again and the ground started freezing. Small ponds skinned all of the way over, bigger ones had ice along the shoreline. That is a big change from last year.

Something else to be aware of is that we had significant wind and rain earlier this week. The winds howled pretty good. The rain I would estimate at 1-2 inches.

That brings me to my next topic, all of the water that we have. Be prepared for lowlands to be flooded. It has been an extremely wet year and lowlands and swamps are full to overflowing. That spot where the ground is always soft is probably under a foot or two of water. Rivers and creeks are going to be well above normal. The Peshtigo River normally runs at about 300CFS today. Right now it is at 850CFS, solidly a foot above normal.

The weather for this deer season looks to be very seasonal. Expect high temperatures in the mid-30s and lows in the low 20s. There is a minor chance of rain or snow Sunday, and a storm for next Tuesday that could bring 1-3 or 2-4″ of snow. There is no snow on the ground right now.

Here are some posters about the bake sale and thanksgiving buffets.

There are also Thanksgiving buffets at Rapids Resort and at Nimrod’s.

In other local news.. It is true that Dollar General is building a store at Hwy X and Kottke Rd. Hwy X takes a jog south at the old Tommy’s Corner Pub and mile or so later to jogs west at a stop sign. That is the corner where the Dollar General will be. There is a gas station and convenience store on that corner now. Coming from the west, it is probably 3 miles east of Popp’s Resort where the stop sign is and X turns north.

I saw a notice the the Trillium in the Woods (The Woods) restaurant and banquet facility is closing temporarily on December 1st. They will still have banquets there but they have cut back daily hours until the world figures out how this COVID thing is going to work out.

On the flip side of that, there is a new place opening up in the old Brown Jug bar in Athelstane called Barrel House North. They have a lot of different kinds of beer and an ambitious menu including char broiled sandwiches and smoked offerings like brisket, ribs, and pulled pork. Good luck to them. Here is a link to their FaceBook page.

Oconto Co ATV trails closed November 1st. Marinette Co is still open, but they advise against recreational riding during deer hunting season for obvious reasons. They left the trails open because a lot of people use ATVs to get to and from hunting spots.

That is it for today. Have a good deer season and be careful.

RJB

Friday November 13, 2020

Greetings and welcome!

Friday the 13th in 2020? Great.

I skipped last Friday’s update because it was 70 degrees outside. We had about a week in the 70s, which was 15-20 degrees above normal. After October being 15-20 degrees below normal and windy and rainy, I had a month of outside work to do in a week.

The nice weather brought some oddities. One was the lady beetles in November. The next one caught me by surprise. For several days the roads were all wet even though it had not rained. My guess is that the frost was coming out of the ground and the moisture was condensation like you get on the outside of a glass with a cold liquid in it.

Small ponds had skinned over with ice and that was long gone by the end of the week. Last year you could walk a little way out on the ice on the lakes.

The nice weather broke earlier this week and the big change was announced by a couple of inches of rain. The USGS gauge by Kosir’s has been winterized, and I didn’t catch the radar estimates, so I am down to guessing. I would put it at about 2-3 inches. Right now the Peshtigo River is running at almost 1,200CFS, much beyond its normal flow of about 300CFS. I would guess it to be at about a +16.

Ditches and low lands are very full of water. Between the wet October and the big rain at the beginning of the week the whole area is well saturated with water. People planning on hunting swampy areas might be surprised by how much water that there is.

Yesterday got into the low 40s. It was a shock after the 70 degree weather. Last night it started raining after sunset. Eventually that rain turned to big goose down flakes. There is a layer of white on the grass this morning. The sun has eaten some of it. It did melt on contact with the sidewalk. so roads are likely just wet.

I have not looked into a deer hunting week forecast  yet.

Work is calling so time to run along. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB