Greetings and welcome!
We are in a very very dry spell right now. The roads and trails are very dusty and rivers are getting low. We haven’t had meaningful rain in about 3 weeks. Naturally fire danger is high.
We did have a little rain, I don’t remember if if was last Friday or Saturday. Some rain moved in from the NNE off of Lake Superior. Remember how I was talking bout those storms that pound rain on one side of the road but not the other? That’s what we had.
Here near Thornton’s on the north side of Caldron Falls Flowage we had a lot of dark clouds and rumbling, but in the end the sidewalk barely got wet. I was working on the RV air conditioner on the roof and I had to race back up there and tie everything down. The view from up there was pretty ominous with black clouds and thunder all around. In the end we got so little rain that the driveway was dry an hour later.
Down the road a little by Bobby J’s (The old Curve Inn) some people from the campground showed videos of it hailing so hard that it looked like it was snowing, and enough came to make the ground white like it snowed. Crazy.
I found the same thing around sunset on some northern forest roads. Looking down a long stretch I could see where patches fifty or a hundred yards wide were very wet and 10 feet later the road was totally dry. Crazy.
The dry weather has stunted the growth of the lawn, and I guess that is good news.
One place that it hasn’t hurt is the mosquitoes. I thought that they needed standing water for their larva to grow in. Apparently not. I went up to the forest to scout one of my secret spots over the weekend. Normally the place would have campers and fishermen. It was empty. I got out of the car and figured out why in about 20 seconds. This was as bad as it gets. It was like being in Canada or Alaska the gators were so thick. This pic was from a Facebook meme but it was about what it was like in 10 seconds.
They aren’t quite as bad away from the lake, but they are still really bad. How can that be when it hasn’t rained in weeks? I don’t know.
In the world of critters I am seeing a lot of people reporting fawns in their yard or being spotted. The bears are very plentiful and there isn’t a lot for them to eat so they are becoming a common sight around homes, cabins, and camps. Be careful about your garbage and bird feeders, and stay alert.
When I was up scouting my campsite I saw that the turtles had started coming up on gravel roads to lay eggs. To me that is a sign that I need to be fishing. Unfortunately I am so busy right now that it isn’t even a consideration.
Hopefully later this week I will get a handle on some weekend events. I just haven’t had a chance to do that yet. Being prime summertime there will be events.
Have a good week and thank you for visiting!
RJB
PS- Send Repel!!