LAKE ICE OUT EARLY

Ever since we arrived in February 2002 the lake ice has always departed around April 19 or 20th. This morning at 7:30am the air temperature was an astounding 23C and the lake ice was gone!
Yesterday we took a photo with Julia, Annie and Martha playing down at the dock. The ice was ready to go and would just take a bit of wind to break it up. On a sidebar, notice in the photo the three ducks. Two of them are males and they are both trying to win over the heart of the lone female. We watched the males throughout the day trying to impress the young lady by beating their chests, flapping wings and spraying water at each other.
So Spring is here and it's about 3 weeks earlier than what we would have expected. It will be nice to get a jump on our annual clean up and will allow us to get onto the landscaping around Chinook, our new straw bale cottage. If you haven't seen Chinook, take a look through our earlier BLOGs or go to the Accommodations page on our website. Hopefully, we have it ready to go by the end of May.

LEGEND SKIING AND PALMS

Our California trip continued after a long drive from Mammoth Lakes, through Death Valley, and then after 9 hours of driving we arrived at Big Bear Lake. Big Bear is home to a couple of really neat ski areas, Snow Summit and Bear Mtn. Not giants in vertical but very popular to the LA and San Diego crowd. Both have terrain parks, but Bear is really a mecca for them. They have "features" everywhere, top to bottom and Meg loved them! The temperatures were warming, the snow started mushing up around lunch, but we got in a lot fun skiing while there.
We also had a chance to stay and ski with Rob's uncle Doug who has made a living in the ski business. In fact, one of the first places he started off was at Snow Summit in the early 50's. He went on to a career that included writing a number of ski books, he was editor in chief of Skiing magazine and his biggest claim to fame is being recognized as the father of freestyle skiing. At just over 80 years of age he sports a long flowing pony tail and can still tear up the slopes faster than most.
We also had a chance to visit Palm Springs and the Indian Canyon. Incredible how beautiful the canyon was, and all of it located in the middle of a scorching hot desert. We ran out of time and would have wished to explore the canyons more.

MAMMOTH TRIP

Every once in a while we are able to get away and last week we took off to California...to ski! Son, Adam and daughter, Meg flew down from Vancouver to meet up with us in LA. We rented a car and drove about 6 hours north to Mammoth Mountain, one of the coolest ski mountains in the west.
It was just below freezing the first day and we had a few inches of fresh snow. The vertical drop at Mammoth is an impressive 3500' with the lower elevation just under 8000' above sea level, the summit is at 11,500'. We found lots of steep stuff and we gave our lungs a real work out. Julia got a great sun tan (we called it a burn!) and Rob stretched about every hamstring in the book skiing runs like Climax and Huevos Grande
After two days of screamin' skiing we headed south to meet up with relatives in Big Bear Lake. We took the longer route and detoured into Death Valley, the lowest spot in North America (almost 400' below sea level). We stopped at Badwater to look around and walked out onto the salt flats. What a amazing place but such a contrast from our 2 days at Mammoth!

WINTER TURKEYS

The wild turkeys are everywhere. Once abundant in Ontario they were hunted out to a point where their numbers were so small. Not long ago they were reintroduced in southern Ontario and now seem to be thriving even in our snowier climates.
They spend most of their time on the ground searching for food. It's not uncommon to see 12 - 20 birds together at one time. As awkward as they look, the wild turkey can really fly. At night they roost in trees and we've seen sitting in trees 75 feet and higher.
The deer don't mind the turkeys either. Not far down the road from us, we've been amazed to see half a dozen deer foraging for food with about a dozen turkeys percolating around their feet, getting any food that they can.