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This is going to be a short one for sure. Not a whole lot exciting happened this week and not a whole lot of exciting things in the near future. I am not complaining, because sometimes the exciting things can be no fun!

Mother nature has certainly taken her foot off the gas pedal for the time being. We are getting regular snows, but just to the tune of a trace to an inch or two. Enough to keep the snowpack fresh and the snowplay good, but not very exciting. Looks like the week ahead will continue the trend of some fresh every day or so, but nothing too big until around Friday and then things may get exciting with a fairly large storm, followed up with a good dose of LES through the weekend.

It did get cold enough this week to be able to resume flooding the ice rink. This first go around sure has been a challenge, complicated by pretty unfavorable weather up until now. We finally have a solid ice sheet with no leaks and now are in the process of flooding the low spots. Grace joined into the flooding fun yesterday and did a great job. There really is a bit of a science to it, especially the shape our ice is in right now. She has a great mind for science and mechanics and was able to fully comprehend the reasoning behind all the madness I was explaining to her.

Today my brother came by and the two of them did a little skating, although about 90 percent of the rink is still way to rough to be able to do more than stumble on. I have put two floods on today and hope for two more. I suspect it is going to take another 5-6 after that and we should have good ice on all of it. Then, maintaining it will be a breeze, just clear the snow with Big Red and flood it once when ever the ice needs resurfacing. I may even make a Zamboni water applicator device for the back of Big Red in the off season, for next season.

My poor sled is still sitting under an apple tree all covered up. This week I did hang all the tongue and groove that had been sitting in the garage since October where the sled will be stored permanently. So I will be getting the sled inside this week and if that snow for the end of the week comes, I may just see about taking a ride.

My final two tidbits revolve the Keweenaw Snowmobile Club. We will be having our third annual bonfire at the Trailside Lodge just north of Calumet. The date is January 25th from 11 am to 2 pm. We will have free hot dogs and brats, as well as chips, sweets, water, hot chocolate and coffee. We would love to have you stop by and meet you as well as chat for a while if you are in the neighborhood. We will also have our latest club merchandise for sale, like ball caps, beanies and sweatshirts.

Secondly, the club is having an all season 50/50 raffle. Meaning tickets have been for sale for about a month and a half already and will remain on sale for another month and a half or so. You will be able to purchase tickets for the raffle at the bonfire, or online at the website: http://www.keweenawsnowmobileclub.com   Some local businesses like M&M Powersports and a few others I cannot remember at the moment are selling them too. 

Until we “meet” again…

Good Night from the Keweenaw..
–JD

Figured I would start out this entry with the theme of the past week. New Day, New Year, New Decade. For some, maybe new job, or new title or new place to call home. We obviously had quite a few new things come into our life and some leave. I am a bit upset at myself that I did not mention Millie in my last entry. She was unquestionably the hardest change we had in 2019. Although the stabbing pain of her not being with us anymore is gone, not a day goes by that I do not think of her. I just spent some time going through the pictures of the first three months of the 2019 journals and the pics which included her seem like they happened both a decade and a day ago. She is missed, but still loved very much.

The Dee’s rang in the new year in typical fashion: Quietly sitting at home, playing euchre, then sneaking in a nap, waking up with around 30 minutes before the “ball drop”. Watching it drop along with all the folks crammed into Times Square. Every year we wonder how anyone could think that is fun. Of course, there are more that would think how could what we do ever be fun? That is what is great about this country. To each their own. As soon as the new year arrived, we all bundled up and went outside to ring in our first new year here in Jacobsville.

It was hardly frigid out, but the sky was clear and afforded us a beautiful view of all the stars to be seen. Nearly zero light pollution down here, so if it cannot be seen on a clear night down here, it probably cannot be seen. Not long after that picture was taken, we were all sound asleep.

That which is in charge of the weather gave me my wish from the last entry. While we did have the precip late Sunday night start out as some light rain and snow, it changed to all snow by around sunrise Monday and came down the rest of the day. A solid 13-18″ was reported across the Keweenaw. This was the look of my truck Tuesday morning by the time all was said and done. My official total was 14″.

A little after snapping that shot, I fired up Big Red and asked it to spin up the snowthrower for the first time this season. It was certainly not the first time I could have used it, but the first time it was ready and we had to move snow. It sure is a joy to sit inside the cab and watch the tractor and blower work so well together to clear the snow away from the path I want it to and toss it out of the way. After clearing our two driveways and ice rink I headed off to clear my brother in laws driveway. He has bought a small camp just up the road from us and was arriving later that day to check in and do some work. It is also fun to be driving Big Red down the road with the blower lifted as high as it will go, but still blowing snow because it is so deep.

We did not have much snow to speak of the rest of the week. A dusting here and there, but then around 10 am today, the flakes began to fly in earnest and we have picked up around 3″. It looks like some pretty regular light snows this week and perhaps a larger storm for a week or so from now. I think it is safe to say that we have fallen behind any chance for a record year, but enough winter left to get past the 300″ mark and even a better chance to get to the seasonal average of 240-260. Temps look to be cooler this week, so that will allow things to freeze back up nicely.

If you have not noticed, I did get the Woods Cam back up and running around 2 weeks ago. To add more interest to it, I have a deer feeder in view. It is automated and spins out feed at 6 am, 10 am, 5 pm and midnight. I checked with the DNR and the way I have it setup and where I have it placed is all within the regulations for recreational deer feeding. So be sure to check it out when you are visiting the site. At times there is quite a few deer having a snack. Including a momma and baby, who seem to be pretty regular visitors and were under the feeder in that last shot.

One of the things Gracie got for Christmas was a compound bow and a bunch of nice arrows. I know how to shoot a compound bow, but did not know how to adjust it so that it was easier for Grace to draw back the string. Gracie’s uncle and her nephew both are avid hunters, so when they were up this week, the made the adjustments and helped her get a little practice. She needs to grow just a bit more so that she has the arm length to easily draw it back to the shooting position, but with some help, it can get there and then she can hold it, aim and fire. So far all of the arrows shot are in the snow somewhere!

I think that about covers it for this one. Looks like a nice snowy and cool week for all of the Northwoods, so hopefully most of you can head north and get some of that snowplay out of your system!

Good night from the Keweenaw..
–JD

As someone that sits fairly high in the rankings of snow lovers out there, I feel pretty comfortable saying that public enemy number 1 among snow lovers is rain. We can deal with cold, warm, winds, sun, darkness, even snow falling so heavily that it keeps you from doing anything. Rain just stinks, no way around it.

Today was one of those days where it was just best to not look outside. I can say that we survived the rain in ok shape. First, we did not get as much rain as was predicted (upwards of an inch) and it did start out as snow, with most areas picking up around 1-3″ before the change over. We did not get that down here in Jacobsville, but as we traveled to the Dreamland to watch the Packer-Lions game, just going north a few miles we got further away from the lake and the roads were covered in an inch of slush from the snow that had been made mush by the rains of this morning falling on the snow. It has stopped raining and does not look do to much more until early tomorrow morning and then will change over to snow soon after any rain starts back up.

A check of the two trail cams on my website showed they were still full covered in snow and pretty flat. I am sure that there are some corners and perhaps some other areas that are bare due to the rains, but we are under a winter storm warning for the potential of 8-12″ of snow tomorrow. So the repairs will come quickly.

Our temperature also did not get as warm as it was initially thought. We have been around 35 since sunset last night and even though we rose to 37 yesterday, the air was pretty dry all day and no melting took place.

The forecast beyond tomorrow’s snow looks good too. Tuesday we will see snow showers with a couple more inches and then fairly quiet for New Years Eve and Day, with a bit of light snow on Thursday and perhaps a 2-5″ snow Sat and again Sun.

Call me an optimist, but I am feeling pretty good about the situation at this point. The stopping of the rain and a clear radar to our south and SW is probably a big part of it.

We had a very nice Christmas holiday. On Christmas Eve, we hosted some friends and all enjoyed a delicious meal prepared by Nora, along with Christmas cookies made by Nora and Grace. Then played some board and card games until it got late and everyone called it a night.

Christmas Day it was just Grace, Nora and I for most of the day. Grace has gotten pretty good and not waking up super early on Christmas morning, in fact, both Nora and I woke up naturally on our own and spent some time with each other before Grace even rolled out of bed. We all took turns opening our presents and were surprised and happy with the things we received. Even the Huck and Bleau got some nice big rawhide bones from Santa this year and we all missed Millie. She was such a sweet heart and made us all so happy.

Late in the afternoon, some more friends stopped by to visit and we munched down on some Norwegian meatballs and then loads of Christmas cookies while we played some more games.

Not much else went on. The weather was rather boring and even a little drab, with temps in the low to mid 30’s and quite a bit of clouds. I did not do anything with the ice rink. With this weekend’s weather looking so ominous, I decided to keep the couple of inches of snow that were on it there and hope that it would help to protect the ice that was underneath. I also was hoping that the rains might help to flood the rink. Just before coming to write this entry, I snapped this shot of the rink from inside the house and it appears to have suffered little to no damage and the rains may have flooded it a bit. The plan it to let it dump snow tomorrow, then get out with the tractor and blower (yes, I finally took the loader off and put the blower on this weekend) and clear it off and resume flooding.

I suspect that our New Years Eve will be fairly quiet. I have to work and Nora’s brother is coming up with his son. He bought a place just up the road from us about a half mile and is coming up to start putting his touches on it. They should be arriving by early afternoon. So I hope to sneak in a nap and make it to midnight.

New Years Day we have been invited to our friends that live in the Yurt for their annual “Dessert in the Yurt” get together and then I suspect we will all need to go on a diet!

Hard to believe that this year has already come to a close. Not just the year, but the decade! Both have been chock full of challenges, sadness, triumphs and joy. I have been blessed beyond words to have the love and support of Nora and Grace through both as well. Not sure how I would have ever made it through both without them. I am so looking forward to the next year and decade to come. Our list of things we want to do and experience in our new home is vast, but sure will be fun doing them!

Have a wonderful New Year everyone!

Good Night from the Keweenaw..
–JD

Perhaps a bit too calm and too bright for some. It’s only been 4 days since the snow stopped falling, but it seems like more. I guess that is what happens when you live in an area that typically sees snow 4-5 times a week all winter long.

We sure were on a frantic pace up until Wednesday of last week. Many areas up here had eclipsed the 100″ mark and talk amongst the locals was that this might be the year we break the 400″ mark. In fact, I was hearing some that are not all that fond of snow saying things like: “If it is going to snow like this all winter, we may as well make it worth it by breaking the 400″ mark”.

I think that feat is still possible, but snows better return pretty soon and come down at a decent clip. I have studied the record year of 78-79 quite a bit and in that year, it snowed pretty regularly from start to finish, including quite a few big storms. You are not going to get to the 400″ mark by having extended periods of snow-less weather. Only time will tell.

With the sun so low on the horizon, we have not had too much melting going on. More settling than anything. Temps have been warming above freezing the past 2 days, plus today. However, we are also dropping to below freezing at night, so that is helping things as well.

As far as conditions go, the fluffy powder we had up until the middle of this week has turned to a wet, mashed potato snow, but the up side is that this will provide an awesome base for the rest of the winter. So in a way, this is really more of a blessing than a curse. I have not been out on my sled yet, the status of my riding season thus far is a parked snowmobile underneath an apple tree. I am pretty much done with all of my catching up work and can now focus on working on the shop, so hopefully in a week or so the space where the sled will live will be cleared out.

I did see some snowmobilers coming down the trails yesterday and it was dark out. The headlights were not bouncing around at all and that told me the trail was still nice and flat. I know our grooming operators were very busy this past week, packing in the snow as much as they could while temps were cold and it looks to have paid off. The forecast sees high temps to top out around 33-35 through Christmas and then some cooling and a chance for snow by Fri-Sat. Beyond that it looks cold, with a fair amount of lake effect.

There was not a whole lot of activity that went on to speak of. Earlier in the week we visited some friends that live up the road from us and on the way back, we spotted some lights out in the Big Lake. As we rounded the corner and got a better view of the lake, we were able to confirm our suspicions that it was a lakes freighter, taking shelter from the NW winds that were blowing pretty hard. Once home, I checked the web and it was the James Barker, on her way to Superior to likely pick up a load of ore.

The progress on the ice rink ground to a halt this week. Earlier in the week, the snows were just too regular and I did not want to play that game of moving snow and then trying to flood. Plus my mind and body were telling me they needed a break. Then the second half of the week the temps were not really optimal for freezing things up. So the rink sits in the same state it was last week at this time. Looks like it will stay that way for a while longer. No worries, we have lots of winter left!

Yesterday we all took a walk around midday. It was the day of the winter solstice, so the sun is at it’s lowest angle in the sky for the entire year. This far north, that means pretty low. Nora snapped this shot of the midday sun shining low on the horizon. The amount of sunlight will be increasing now, which is good by me.

I hope everyone’s Christmas is a joyous one!

Good Night from the Keweenaw..
–JD

My apologies for not writing last week, but still in a very, very busy time right now. I am not complaining, actually loving it, but it really is incredible all that still needs to be done to get back to a sense of normal around here. I have not touched a thing in my office or shop. Still no lighting at all in the shop or the lean-to’s. My office does have light and has had it since I move into it, but still no wall coverings, no flooring, no ceiling and a couple of my computers are still not going and that explains why there is no updated weather bug on the website and no woods cam.

I do hope to get the woods cam going early this week, along with adding the rest of the cams to the new NCN.

What has been keeping me so busy? Well, it is actually a number of things. Just my daily work duties, as well as anytime I need to get something from a store, it is a bare minimum 1 hour affair. It is a beautiful and relaxing drive north to civilization, even meditative, but does eat into the working time of the day!

Another thing that has been keeping me busy both around the house and having to travel is the building of an ice rink in our backyard. When we found out we would be buying the house we moved into, it was decided early on that the backyard would be a perfect place for an ice rink. Very flat ground and no trees in most of it. So back on December 5th, I brought big red into the backyard and started clearing snow to put the rink in. There was about 14″ of very dense snow on the ground and I did not have the blower on Big Red (still don’t), but Big Red and it’s loader did a great job of moving the snow out of the way.

I was really having a good time. Sitting in the heated cab, listening to tunes and moving the snow. About 90 minutes later, the snow was pretty much cleared and it was getting close to my bed-time, so I called it a night. As I put Big Red away for the night, I was thinking to myself: “boy this is going to be great! All I need to do is put some plastic down and then a flood and we will be skating in no time!” Ha Ha, UGH!

The next day I brought Big Red back and had the plastic sheeting in it’s bucket. Grace and I spread the plastic down. The biggest sheeting I could find I had was not big enough to cover it with one piece, so we overlapped 3 pieces. We overlapped the pieces by around a foot and I knew we still might get some seepage at the creases, but not too much.

So then the next day we set about putting water down. The first sign of things to come happened when I tried to attach the hose to the outdoor spigot. I had problems threading the hose on and upon closer inspection, I saw that when someone had put some rot stopping material on the bottom of the wood siding, some of that had gotten onto the threads for the spigot. So we started looking inside for a suitable spigot. The only one we found that would work and was close enough was the one in the sauna. So we hooked up the hose to that and let the water flow.

We had about 200 feet of hose the water had to flow through to get to the site of the rink. I am not sure if it was the friction from all of that hose, or just low water pressure, but the water came out way too slow to be able to flood the rink before spring came. So I went to the shop to fetch my booster pump. We used in Mohawk to boost the pressure to water the garden. It worked, but still the water came out too slowly to seriously consider using that setup. Plus, I was worried about running the house well dry. So I dropped the intake hose for the pump into the surface well we have in the back and the pump could not draw it up. It was only designed to boost pressure, not lift water.

So the next day, I went and picked up a motor driven transfer pump, along with the hosing. Unfortunately, I was given (and did not inspect it myself) the wrong sized siphon hose. It has rigid walls so that it does not collapse under the suction pressure of the pump. Again, too late in the day to go all the way back to Houghton and pick up the correct size, so it had to be done the next day.

In the mean time, we picked up 8″ of fresh snow and now the rink was covered in a thick blanket of snow. I did get the pump going and gave it a try, thinking that the water might melt the snow, as it was the pretty light and fluffy type. No such luck. Actually, had the pump not drained the surface well in around 3 minutes, it might have worked. However, the volume of the well was less than I had hoped for and could only sustain the pump for around 3 minutes. The well would refill in about an hour, but that was too much time to hope to melt the snow.

So I used Big Red to move the snow. Even though I was as careful as I could be to not move the plastic around, it did move some. I tried to get all the seams back together, but with the snow and all, I could not get it perfect.

So the next day I got to flooding again and managed to get a layer across all of the ice, but also picked up another 8″ of snow. So I again had to move snow off the rink before flooding. This time the layer of ice kept things in place. I did set up a pretty good system with flooding, going back to work on other things and then after 60 minutes, putting another flood on. By last night, the water was actually beginning to puddle up enough in spots to give a nice, flat layer of ice. That was only about 10 percent of the rinks surface, but there is some light at the end of the tunnel!

Sorry for rambling on so long about the trials of my ice rink building in the past 10 days, but I figured if I had to go through so much hard work, I was going to make you all suffer a bit with me! With a little luck, the next entry will have pics of us out playing on it. Pray for me though!

All the snow getting in the way of the rink building this week had me seriously hoping for a bit of a break. I continue to be amazed at how much snow we have gotten here in Jacobsville so far this season. Just this week alone, we picked up 27 1/2″. So much for the banana belt reputation! Actually, other areas have picked up much more. In just 3 days this week, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, the official measuring location for the Keweenaw County Road Commission picked up over 30″ of snow and I know that they have been hit pretty hard in the past 2 days as well. The web cams in Twin Lakes are showing 4 feet on the level! Crazyness all over the UP! Even northern WI is sporting some serious snowcover for this time of the year.

The fresh snow does make it fun to check out what critters are roaming around. On our walk the other day, Huck and I came across a set of coyote tracks and a little further up the road, a fresh set of deer tracks. The deer tracks are really not that much of a thrill, seeing as how they come right up to our living room window to pay a visit to their buddy Bleau. Nora and her eagle eye caught this cute little one hanging out in the doorway of our garage door yesterday. It was a weasel and I hope he is not planning on making a home out of our garage! I do plan to set a live trap just to make sure though.

With all the snows have some some strong winds too. The big lake is still at record high levels, so anytime a big blow comes around, shoreline is lost in quite a few places. We have neighbor friends that go to warmer weather in the winter, so Nora and Grace went to check on their place recently. All was well. A few trees down from the Thanksgiving eve storm, but none on the house.

With all the wildness of the weather up here, mother nature also presents us with some magnificently calm weather. Such was the day that the girls went off on ski and snowshoe to check on the neighbors place. With shots like that and this next one of the Jacobsville Lighthouse, I think she should be the official photographer for JohnDee.com!

Gracie has been enjoying Jacobsville and the weather. Getting together with her friends that live down here and even having some friends that live back in the high country down for sleep-overs. The Thanksgiving eve storm took down a couple of large cedars in our back yard and she has been having lots of fun climbing on them with her friends.

A sure sign of how busy the Dee’s have been of late is that we JUST put up our Christmas tree yesterday! That might not be a big deal for a normal person or family, but we many times have our’s up by or immediately following Thanksgiving. Had we not done it yesterday, it might not have gotten done until next weekend!

For some reason, we had decided to hang onto the tree we had in the cabin in Lake Linden. It was a 7 footer and very beautiful, but once we had the high ceilings of the addition, we picked up a 10 footer. A good thing we kept it, because the 10 footer would not have fit in our new home and the new owners of our old home did not have to get a tree for themselves, as we left it there for them.

No matter what is happening in our lives at the moment, our family always relaxes, laughs and reflects as we decorate the Christmas tree. A very beautiful tradition that well all cherish. So Christmas can now happen this year, we have our tree up!

The final picture I have to share with you is from the Calumet Figure Skating’s Christmas program. It is different from the season ending show in March. In this one, the skaters choose if they even want to be part of the show, as well as what they want to do while on the ice. They also choose what to wear and the music they are skating too. Some do it in groups, while others do it solo. Grace did a solo this year and did a great job. It is amazing how calm she is in front of an audience. She actually seems to feed off of their energy. All smiles and no fear. Nora and I are truly blessed.

Good Night from the Keweenaw..
–JD