1/10/10 LOCKED IN ICE

FROZEN RAINBOW
FROZEN SUN
THEY MUST BE IN THERE SOMEWHERE
MIGHTY ROUGH
Sunday, 9:00 AM. 14 degrees, wind SW, calm but with dark snow clouds collecting in the northwest. The channel is freezing over, and the clear ice, prism-like, reflects all the colors of the spectrum, a frozen rainbow. The sky is partly blue with a wide variety of clouds, and the barometer, like the sky, predicts snow.
Yesterday being so beautiful, we took a ride about the countryside in conjunction with our usual trip to the recycle center. Ice fishermen are now huddling in their little canvas hooches on Buffalo Bay, off Red Cliff, where Basswood Island is only three miles from the shore. The Islands are gradually being locked in ice.
At Little Sand Bay on the other side of the peninsula, the pack ice, driven by the prevailing NW winds, has frozen in large bumpy blocks all the way out to Sand Island. It will be very difficult to traverse it by any means, and no one was out upon it.
Yesterday was the annual sled and cutter rally in Ashland at the Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center, but we did not get down there this year. It has always been a very colorful, fun event.