Ice Shove last weekend, today Ice Circles!

A while back a friend here in town told us about seeing Ice Circles (also called Ice Disks or Ice Pans) here in Port Wing down at the Lake.  They sounded pretty cool and I wondered at the time if we'd ever be able to see them.  It seemed like it would be just a happenstance to be there just when the conditions would be right for them to form.  The Internet articles about them say they form by spinning, bumping against one another to round out the edges, and then with the right weather conditions frost forms around the borders to define their shapes.

Well...this morning while we were sitting in the Ford car dealer waiting for our car to be serviced, and thanks to their wifi I checked my recent favorite site - and you know that site is the ice caves camera.  And this is what I saw:

Ice circles!  This picture was from April 30th and they stayed around until about noon when the winds & waves moved them on somewhere else.  

Today on our way back home, we stopped in at Meyers Beach where all the winter Ice Cave action took place a couple months ago.  It all looked much more peaceful than when we were there in February, and the wayside seems to have recovered pretty well.  I stood on the steps leading to the beach and I could see more of these ice formations.  However, it was too far away to take a picture.  

So we drove on towards home and then Leann took us on a little detour to check out the wildlife (pictures below) and ended up right along the shore in the town of Herbster.  (By the way, they have the BEST campsites here in the summer.  The tent sites are right along the lake, RVs are across the road. Beautiful!) And this was the view there:

Again, the ice circles are there but they are hard to see because I wasn't close enough or high enough to photograph them. So we drove on the Port Wing to our own harbor area, and I finally got a picture of them!

Other sights of the day:

Two sandhill cranes.

As we slowly drove down the road next to where they were, they both lay down like the one on the right.  I don't know if that was a defensive position for camouflage or if they both got tired at the same time.  Then the one on the left stood up, but he's still pretty camouflaged.

A wetland area leading into Bark Bay on Lake Superior.  We thought maybe by this weekend we will begin hearing the "spring peepers" singing away in the pooled water that seems to be everywhere.  No sun but still encouraging!

Little stream leading out into Bark Bay.  It's just so nice to see--and hear--water running.

And we're expecting big weather improvements this weekend!