10 Degrees at Timms Hill

Don't believe me when I say I went hiking when it was only 10F the day before yesterday?  I don't blame you, so here's a little proof of the kind of weather I've been dealing with as I go on my sales calls.

Right? Ridiculous!  Anyone in Tacoma or Gatlinburg or Saint George who is complaining this winter should be ashamed of themselves.  I make a vow right now that if I ever get to winter in one of those places that I will be grateful for whatever the weather gods throw at me.  Yesterday morning when I woke up in the town of Phillips it was -18F.

And that was NOT the wind chill, that was the AIR TEMPERATURE.  I couldn't believe my car started, to be honest.

But the afternoon before that it was a balmy 10F and there was sunshine and no wind so I donned my snowpants and my ski gloves and went for a half hour walk at Timms Hill.  If you notice on the sign above it was only a little over 9 miles to the junction of the Ice Age Trail.  So funny!

Am I smiling?  No one will ever know.

Having to walk uphill kept me warm and I needed the exercise after too many hours to count driving around northern Wisconsin. It was getting later in the day so the light was quite beautiful.  My pictures look like Colorado instead of Wisconsin!  We don't get much sunshine up here in the winter for some reason, so I was grateful for the sun.

Timms Hill is the highest natural elevation point in Wisconsin at an elevation of 1,951.5 feet.  I hear you Westerners laughing out there.  I hope you didn't spit out your coffee or anything when you read that.  We're about hills here, not mountains.  Glacial topography and all that jazz.

It was my first visit to the County Park, and everything was closed including the entrance with who knows how many feet of plowed snow in front of it as well.  So I parked on the side of the road.  Notice all the salt on my car, that is pretty much how it has looked since December began.  It's warmed up enough a few times to wash it but it just looks the same again within 24 hours.  Right now you can't even read my license plate it is whited out with salt so heavily.

The main roads in Wisconsin are plowed and salted, the less important roads "out in the county" get a cursory plowing and they toss some sand at the intersections for traction.  Just a tip I had to share with my sales partner who is originally from Illinois and until she took this job had only ventured a few miles above the state line.  In Illinois it all gets salted for the most part, of course it's all town and mad traffic so there is a trade-off.  I'll take the snow packed county roads I guess.

Near Timms Hill I spotted this montrous deer, I can only imagine the antics folks have gotten up to as they've left the restaurant or bar with a few beers in them.

credit https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-12/stop-shooting-wolves-you-maniacs

My sincerest apologies to the photographer who shot the photo above. I found it at this link on Popular Science.  Why am I including it here?  I swear I saw this guy's twin on the side of the road not far from Timm's Hill the next day.  My first wolf sighting and it was Wisconsin, you could have knocked me over with a feather!  I was driving away, it had crossed the road not long before and was looking back over its shoulder as it paused a moment before going into the woods.  It was probably a little older than the young wolf pictured above but definitely a juvenile.  I hope he or she makes it through the winter, they don't tend to live long lives battling the cold and having a hard time to find something to eat.  Not to mention getting picked off by folks with guns.  FYI, a total of 232 wolf packs were estimated last year in Wisconsin for a total of over 900 wolves.  Wow!

Read the article provided by the link, it's a good 'un! I thought it was pretty funny to point out that vultures kill more livestock than wolves, not to mention that respiratory problems and digestive problems kill way more than all predators combined.  I know when we attempted to raise cows (3 calves total) not one of them made it.  The first died before it was even off the bottle, the second died of some mysterious ailment the neighbor farmer said was probably "twisted bowl" and the third was the one we thought would make it was almost ready to take to market when it ate some poisonous weeds.  Stupid creatures!  How our ancestors survived raising cows I have no idea - have a good weekend!