Are we lazy or what? Well not really. I did get out and do my usual pre-dawn walk. In my snowpants and my balaclava and I can’t even remember how many layers. It is spooky walking in the dark up here when there are huge snowbanks on the sides of the road. I am invisible in the dark and so when I see a vee-hickle coming along, I have to either scramble up a snowbank to get well out of its way, or duck into a driveway, if there’s one nearby that’s shoveled out. Anyway, it was bloomin’ cold and we were all slow about getting out and so we didn’t ski and I always feel guilty when I don’t ski when there is plenty of snow but I dunno, sometimes it just isn’t the right thing.

But it is Tip Up Town (TUT) weekend and we went there instead! We didn’t stay a very long time because over on that side of the lake it was bloomin’ cold and windy and we were fairly well dressed but not perfectly and so. TUT happens every January here on Houghton Lake. It is an ice-fishing festival and this is the 59th year, so that means it began in 1950, if I’m calculating accurately. By the time I began attending TUT in the early 80s or so, you’d’ve almost never guessed that there was ice fishing involved. It looked almost more like a snowmo fest by then. But ice fishing is in the roots of the fest and it is still an important part of it.

This looked like a wonderful year for Tip Up Town. There is a ton of snow here and it’s really cold and snowmobiles are everywhere. They are flying by the cabin on the highway out on the ice and there are so many of them in the downtown area that driving an automotive vee-hickle can be a bit difficult. And there is ice fishing. And I am gonna ski tomorrow if I have to go by myself. The picture is from a Tip Up Town back in the 1980s. 1987, I think. Click here or on the pic for more Tip Up Town pics. Mostly from today but maybe some of y’all can spot a couple of older ones. And there are some people I don’t know. Like I am not sure who that woman with the pink flask is and I am not sure where she got those Mardi Gras beads.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 24th, 2009 at 7:17 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.