Winter has Begun

We had our first significant snow in Alger County last week. As I drove west to Marquette for my last art show of the year (yea!), the amount of snow on the ground decreased until when I arrived in Marquette there was almost none. I set up the booth and worked it Friday and Saturday. Then, I took my friend, Helen, out to dinner as a thanks for allowing me to stay at their house. Afterwords, Helen and I headed over to the hockey rink to watch part of Northern Michigan University's game against Western. Her husband, Jim, is concession manager so we wanted to go by to say hello while he was working. When we woke up the next morning it was amazing. Over night Marquette received around ten inches of snow!

I worked the booth on Sunday and then packed it up. The roads were horrible, so I decided to stay over one more night. That allowed Helen and I to go snowshoeing on Monday. She just purchased her snowshoes on Saturday, so she was thrilled to have a chance to go out and use them. Thanks to Woo and Terry who loaned me a pair,since my snowshoes were still at home. Here is a shot of Helen on her maiden voyage. Helen is one of the four of us who will be hiking the Grand Canyon in January.



After arriving home, Wendy and I have snowshoed the last two days. Wendy is also one of the four hiking the Grand Canyon in January. The fourth person is my friend, Phylster, from Colorado. Wendy and I snowshoed from the Sable Visitor's Center to the footbridge and up into the dunes. Depending on where you were, the wind varied from almost nothing to around 50 mph! The wind was really bad when you were in the dunes and up on the ridges. A couple of times I almost was blown over.






This shot I took out the front window of my house. We have had lake effect snow every day for a week.



The snow is definitely starting to pile up!



The art show was at the Superior Dome in Marquette. The Superior Dome, which opened as the world’s largest wooden dome on September 14, 1991, is a domed stadium on the campus of Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Michigan. It is home to the Northern Michigan Wildcats football team, as well as a variety of campus and community events. A nickname is the Yooper Dome.

The Dome stands 14 stories high and encompasses 5.1 acres (21,000 m²) under its roof. Constructed as a geodesic dome with 781 Douglas Fir Beams and 108.5 miles (175 km) of fir decking, the Dome has a permanent seating capacity of 8,000, though the building can hold as many as 16,000 people. The facility features a diameter of 163.4 m (536 ft), and has the ability to withstand 60 pounds-force per square foot of snow and 80 mile per hour (130 km/h) winds. These features are critical because of the extreme, unpredictable winter weather in Marquette, because of its location on the southern shore of Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.