Winter snowshoe and picnic

Work on the book continues to go well. I finished taking most of the photographs two days ago. The only pictures left to take are fluorescent photos of syenite. I will probably take those pictures this evening. As I edit the third draft, I am folding in the pictures and compiling the list of figures with attributions. I hope to have the book ready for my reviewers in the next week!

In the mean time, I have continued getting out with my friend, Barb, on winter adventures three days a week. To preserve time for working on the book, on Mondays and Wednesdays we go on adventures that are no longer than an hour or so. On Fridays, we go on longer adventures which includes winter picnics. We take turns deciding what we are going to do and where we go.

The first picture was taken at Lake Superior State Forest Campground, located east of Grand Marais. This trip was on January 13th. At that point we had not received much snow, so we were able to drive to the campground. I only took one picture since it was getting late. After quickly cooking dinner on the grate, we went hunting for fluorescent syenite (Barb's request). I did not find any; she found one.

The next adventure wherein I brought my camera was January 23rd. We parked the car and snowshoed down the road to the boat ramp at Sable Lake in the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. 

Someone else had cleaned the snow off one of the picnic tables at the boat ramp, so that is where we cooked dinner. I pre-cooked a teriyaki chicken and vegetable dinner. I prepared individual portions in mini-aluminum pans and wrapped both in towels. I used my backpack stove to heat my portion up. Since it was still warm, Barb went for it. We also had Barb's cookies, olives, cheese, grapes, and cashews!

The photo below shows our view of frozen Sable Lake. Although it was ice covered, the ice is still not very thick.

View of the Grand Sable dunes across the lake.

Boat ramp dock.

 Birch trees....

 

 

We decided to bushwacke through the trees so Barb could give her new snowshoes a good test.

 

 

 

 

It got thick in places....but it was beautiful!

 

When we arrived back to our picnic table, a couple of different snowmobile groups disturbed our peace and quiet.

We should have headed back to the car when it started getting dark, but we stuck around to enjoy the sunset. The 1.1 mile snowshoe back to the car was easily done in the dark. We did not even need our headlamps since the snow made it easy to see where the road was.