After the clean-up comes the burn

One of the satisfactions that comes with cleaning out junk is actually disposing of it--removing it from your life.  Today the conditions were right for a good burn--no wind, snow on the ground--so we took all of the papers we cleaned out yesterday and hauled them out to our on-going burn pile.

 It was all pretty uneventful until an small airplane flew over our house REAL LOW and, of course, my first thought was that it was because of our--very little--fire.  And besides, I had just this week signed up online with DNR for our yearly burning permit, and as I said, conditions were safe for burning.  But we watched the plane flying north then right away it veered to the right and flew over the lakeshore towards the location of the ice caves. We decided it might have been people from a news agency checking out the ice situation.  And just now on the 10pm news, they reported on the LACK of any good ice yet this year.  Oh, well...

This photo below, posted on Facebook just now, was taken by my neighbor, David McRoberts, showing the area by the ice caves but taken from a spot up above and looking down to the water from up high.  He must have hiked over there from Meyers Beach or some other good access point.  Lots of ice hanging down but no ice to walk on!

And just a few more pictures from today...  This is one of the oldest trees in the orchard by our house and it's still loaded with apples!  Hmmm...what can you do with frozen apples?

After the burning was over we drove over to Herbster for lunch.  There we saw this pretty impressive piece of equipment used to groom the snowmobile trails.  I just checked the Bayfield County snowmobile trail report, and the description there for trail conditions was only "fair."  Can't believe I'd say this, but we really need snow!

Herbster has a beautiful beach and campground right next to the water, but the wave action is coming a little too close to the shore and trying to wash away the road.  Everything is still drivable but it could be an interesting spring for this location and others.

This is the same Herbster beach looking east.  Imagine yourself on a warm July evening sitting by your tent and campfire, and listening to the waves washing up to the sand.  Yes, there's snow and ice piled up there now...that's why I said "imagine!"

And finally, on our trip home we looked up and saw this eagle in the tree looking out over the lake.  It looks like a lump, but, really, it's an eagle.

That's all for today!