You know you’ve left the winter wonderland when
it’s 73 degrees and people are walking around
in shorts and short sleeve shirts. We left
LaPorte, Indiana Friday evening in a heavy
rain/snow mix, which turned to all snow
briefly and coated our car with about 1/4
inch of snow while we were eating dinner
in Lafayette, Indiana. Driving through the night,
we made it back to Birmingham by 6
Saturday morning. Yesterday, we went for a walk
around our neighborhood in very warm
73 degree weather! Birmingham had a record high temp on January 2nd of 78 degrees!

Let me tell you about the rest of our fun trip
to the Wisconsin Winter Wonderland. We first
drove from Shell Lake all the way across the
state to Green Bay, Wisconsin where we had
a fun time catching up with Kristine’s college
roommates and friends. Clockwise from the top left
in the collage above:

1. We went to Mackinac’s with Dan and Dena (middle) and their son, Derek
   where we met Robyn (right) and her husband Rick, Betsy
   and her husband Eric and son Gabriel.
2. After spending the night with Dena and Dan, we met Jen (center) and Pat and
   their 8-month old daughter Callie.
3. At Dan and Dena’s house, Analise and Derek played together.
   When Dena took this picture, Analise had on her own just gotten up and went
   right over to Derek and sat down to be close to him.
4. This last picture is of Kristine and Dena, roomates of 4 years and their lively little ones!

After leaving Green Bay, we headed down to LaPorte, Indiana
to visit Grandma Vivian and Charlie. We spent the night
at Steve and Connie’s house, where Analise had fun playing
with some baby dolls and a dollhouse. I came in from the garage at one point
to find Analise taking a handfull of dog food and throwing it
at Brandy, the family dog. In the afternoon, I decided to go on
one more bike ride to head the 15 miles one way to the Michigan
border hoping that it would start snowing along the way.
I unfortunately didn’t make it to Michigan because
I got a flat tire near the Galena Marsh. Kristine had to borrow
a car to come pick me up since I didn’t have any bike tools
with me to fix or replace the tube. I’m glad it wasn’t snowing
because I had to sit next to this sign for about 20 minutes, and
it sure gets cold fast when you aren’t moving at all.

At about 6pm we left for Alabama in a driving rain storm that
soon turned into snow. When we stopped for dinner in Lafayette, Indiana
it was snowing pretty hard, and we had a quarter inch of snow on
our car by the time we came out! The snow quickly turned back to rain as
we headed south, and the snow was completely gone even before we
made it to Kentucky.

Speaking of snow, we had quite a bit of fun in the snow before
we left Shell Lake as evidenced by the collage above. Clockwise from the top left
in the collage above.

1. Hal and Anna joined us for a rousing game of electronic catch phrase.
   During the game, it started to snow! We headed down the street to a fun
   hill and went sledding. Here is Kat, Hal, Anna, and Analise all piled
   onto each other at the bottom of the hill.
2. Snow or stars? You decide.
3. Here is a picture of the three beautiful sisters and Analise
   right before we left.
4. Here it is snowing in Spooner on our way out of town
   where we stopped at our favorite coffee shop in the whole world, Alley Cats, for one last
   coffee drink to go.

Earlier in the day, I had to go for one more bike ride … this time to retrace
my tracks on the lake and find out what really happened!

I started out by riding on a railroad grade converted into a snow-mobile trail.
Eventually, I turned off the railroad grade and followed a different trail
through a corn field before taking some beautiful snow-covered roads back
to Shell Lake.

Then I headed out onto the lake which was now covered with between 1/4
and 1/2 inch of new snow. After venturing out a little ways onto the lake
and realizing how firm the ice was because of the colder temperatures and
how easy the riding was because of the new snow, I set out to follow my
tracks from a couple days earlier when I
got lost
in the heavy fog.

Here is an updated map. Recall that the green
line was the intended track, and the red line indicated my best
guess at the actual track. The new blue line gives a more accurate
picture of my actual track after I was able to find my deep
track still frozen in the ice two days later.

From the top, reading left to right
in the collage above (the numbers correspond to the
numbers on the map):

• 1. Here is an ice fishing hole that I had just barely missed in the fog.
• 2. Here is the outline of a bicycle accident. If you look
  carefully, you can see where both wheels slid out from
  under me and from where my body hit the ground.
  Notice the two sets of tracks that I was following. One
  was from my outward track in the fog, the other was
  from my returning “lost in the fog” track.
• 3a. There are two pictures for the number three.
  The first is of the island which was much more visible
  than on the day I got lost.
• 3b. The other number three picture is of a place
  where my outgoing and incoming tracks crossed the
  day I got lost in the fog.
• 4. Here is where I started to sink very deeply
  into the ice, and I made a 180 degree turn heading back,
  ironically, in the correct direction. Note how
  wide the track is in the ice from where the ice
  was seperating.
• 5. Finally, here in this last picture, you can see a number
  of things. First, you can see that my track veers from one snow
  mobile track to another. Also, you can see the difference in the
  depths of my tracks the day I got lost when temperatures were
  warmer and the ice was slushier compared to our last day in
  Shell Lake when it was much colder.