{"id":146,"date":"2006-01-03T14:53:07","date_gmt":"2006-01-03T19:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/?p=146"},"modified":"2006-01-03T14:53:07","modified_gmt":"2006-01-03T19:53:07","slug":"Leaving the Winter Wonderland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/?p=146","title":{"rendered":"Leaving the Winter Wonderland"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know you’ve left the winter wonderland when
\nit’s 73 degrees and people are walking around
\nin shorts and short sleeve shirts. We left
\nLaPorte, Indiana Friday evening in a heavy
\nrain\/snow mix, which turned to all snow
\nbriefly and coated our car with about 1\/4
\ninch of snow while we were eating dinner
\nin Lafayette, Indiana. Driving through the night,
\nwe made it back to Birmingham by 6
\nSaturday morning. Yesterday, we went for a walk
\naround our neighborhood in very warm
\n73 degree weather! Birmingham had a record high temp on January 2nd of 78 degrees!\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n<\/td>\n\n\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\n\n<\/td>\n\n\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

\nLet me tell you about the rest of our fun trip
\nto the Wisconsin Winter Wonderland. We first
\ndrove from Shell Lake all the way across the
\nstate to Green Bay, Wisconsin where we had
\na fun time catching up with Kristine’s college
\nroommates and friends. Clockwise from the top left
\nin the collage above:\n<\/p>\n

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

    \nAfter leaving Green Bay, we headed down to LaPorte, Indiana
    \nto visit Grandma Vivian and Charlie. We spent the night
    \nat Steve and Connie’s house, where Analise had fun playing
    \nwith some baby dolls and a dollhouse. I came in from the garage at one point
    \nto find Analise taking a handfull of dog food and throwing it
    \nat Brandy, the family dog. In the afternoon, I decided to go on
    \none more bike ride to head the 15 miles one way to the Michigan
    \nborder hoping that it would start snowing along the way.
    \nI unfortunately didn’t make it to Michigan because
    \nI got a flat tire near the Galena Marsh. Kristine had to borrow
    \na car to come pick me up since I didn’t have any bike tools
    \nwith me to fix or replace the tube. I’m glad it wasn’t snowing
    \nbecause I had to sit next to this sign for about 20 minutes, and
    \nit sure gets cold fast when you aren’t moving at all.\n<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n\n\n
    \n\n<\/td>\n\n\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

    <\/center><\/p>\n

    \nAt about 6pm we left for Alabama in a driving rain storm that
    \nsoon turned into snow. When we stopped for dinner in Lafayette, Indiana
    \nit was snowing pretty hard, and we had a quarter inch of snow on
    \nour car by the time we came out! The snow quickly turned back to rain as
    \nwe headed south, and the snow was completely gone even before we
    \nmade it to Kentucky.\n<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n\n\n\n
    \n\n<\/td>\n\n\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    \n\n<\/td>\n\n\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

    <\/center><\/p>\n

    \nSpeaking of snow, we had quite a bit of fun in the snow before
    \nwe left Shell Lake as evidenced by the collage above. Clockwise from the top left
    \nin the collage above.\n<\/p>\n

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

      \nEarlier in the day, I had to go for one more bike ride … this time to retrace
      \nmy tracks on the lake and find out what really happened!\n<\/p>\n

      <\/p>\n\n\n
      \n\n<\/td>\n\n\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

      <\/center><\/p>\n

      \nI started out by riding on a railroad grade converted into a snow-mobile trail.
      \nEventually, I turned off the railroad grade and followed a different trail
      \nthrough a corn field before taking some beautiful snow-covered roads back
      \nto Shell Lake.\n<\/p>\n

      \nThen I headed out onto the lake which was now covered with between 1\/4
      \nand 1\/2 inch of new snow. After venturing out a little ways onto the lake
      \nand realizing how firm the ice was because of the colder temperatures and
      \nhow easy the riding was because of the new snow, I set out to follow my
      \ntracks from a couple days earlier when I
      \ngot lost<\/a>
      \nin the heavy fog.\n<\/p>\n


      \n
      \n<\/center><\/p>\n

      Here is an updated map. Recall that the green
      \nline was the intended track, and the red line indicated my best
      \nguess at the actual track. The new blue line gives a more accurate
      \npicture of my actual track after I was able to find my deep
      \ntrack still frozen in the ice two days later.\n<\/p>\n

      <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
      \n\n<\/td>\n\n\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
      \n\n<\/td>\n\n\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
      \n\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
      \n\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

      <\/center><\/p>\n

      \nFrom the top, reading left to right
      \nin the collage above (the numbers correspond to the
      \nnumbers on the map):\n<\/p>\n

        \n
      • 1. Here is an ice fishing hole that I had just barely missed in the fog.<\/li>\n
      • 2. Here is the outline of a bicycle accident. If you look
        \ncarefully, you can see where both wheels slid out from
        \nunder me and from where my body hit the ground.
        \nNotice the two sets of tracks that I was following. One
        \nwas from my outward track in the fog, the other was
        \nfrom my returning “lost in the fog” track.<\/li>\n
      • 3a. There are two pictures for the number three.
        \nThe first is of the island which was much more visible
        \nthan on the day I got lost.<\/li>\n
      • 3b. The other number three picture is of a place
        \nwhere my outgoing and incoming tracks crossed the
        \nday I got lost in the fog.<\/li>\n
      • 4. Here is where I started to sink very deeply
        \ninto the ice, and I made a 180 degree turn heading back,
        \nironically, in the correct direction. Note how
        \nwide the track is in the ice from where the ice
        \nwas seperating.<\/li>\n
      • 5. Finally, here in this last picture, you can see a number
        \nof things. First, you can see that my track veers from one snow
        \nmobile track to another. Also, you can see the difference in the
        \ndepths of my tracks the day I got lost when temperatures were
        \nwarmer and the ice was slushier compared to our last day in
        \nShell Lake when it was much colder.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

        \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkzLf-2m","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}