What a wonderful weekend we had staying with our North Country Trail friends up at Tahquamenon. We were able to rent a DNR lodge between the lower and upper falls. The plan was to take long death marches, hiking, snowshoeing, skiing or whatever. In the photo below, we are arriving in Paradise, which is 10 miles east of Tahquamenon. I was driving. I am NOT a terribly confident snow driver these days but this was fine with me. There were almost no cars anywhere. Snowmobiles? Going everywhere along the side of the road.

I was trying to get a picture of what it’s like in Paradise and in pursuit of that goal, I was kind of slithering all over the place, not because the road was slippery because it wasn’t (if you were driving for the conditions, which I certainly was, at like five mph…). Anyway, I finally found an appropriate photo opp, which was that big pile of snow in front of the “Soo…” sign.

As I was taking the pitcher, I was vaguely aware of two vee-hickles passing me… I took the photo and we continued on through Paradise and up to the DNR lodge. When we got there, Marilyn and Joan had already arrived and they were talking about passing us in Paradise! It wasn’t until we were sitting at the Brewery a bit later that I looked at the photo and realized that Marilyn’s car was there at the left. She is one of our loverly NCT hiking friends and among other things, she supplied me with choppers and hand-warmers this weekend. More on that later this week, maybe.

This weekend was rather a bust in terms of the death-march style hiking we usually do with our NCT friends. Below zero temps Saturday and today. We did a short but strenuous off-trail snowshoe on Friday (when it was a balmy 18 degrees), some *very* short hiking loops yesterday (at below zero temps and blowing snow), including down the steps to the Upper Falls. This morning it was minus 19. As cold as it was, we left the lodge reluctantly, wishing we had more time to hike, etc.

By the time we got to Paradise, the temperature had risen ten degrees to minus 9 and I took this photo from behind the Frog Hopper with bare hands. That tracklike thingy on the right is where snow-mobiles ride. Not this morning. Too cold for almost anything.

Long drive today but mostly dry pavement once we hit the I75 SUV Speedway. I took over at Indian River. That’s also the time I took off my [new] snowpants [thanks to the young woman at the Ski Ranch for helping me pick them out!] and my ski jacket and boots. The temperature never went above 6 degrees anywhere we were today but the sun was strong and I was pretty hot in the Frog Hopper. As luck would have it, a beach urchin arrived at The Landfill before we got there — with a plan to cook dinner. We walked over to the Plum Market to get ingredients and man oh man, did 6 degrees feel balmy!

Thanks so much to all of our Hiawatha Shore-to-Shore North Country Trail friends for such a wonderful weekend! No words for how much I loved the weekend and how hard it was to leave today.

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