Greetings and welcome!
Well it is over. The sun and warm day yesterday sealed our fate. Forest Co closed their trails this morning, and Red Arrow, Paul Bunyan, and Chute Pond snowmobile trails will close for the season at 11:59PM tonight.
Iron Snowshoe and Dun-Good haven’t updated since before the weekend, so I am not sure about their closing dates. I know that the Iron Snowshoe trails that I saw between here and Crivitz yesterday are shot and it is really a question of making the call. Dun-Good almost always has more snow than we do, they might get in a little more time before it is time to quit. Our 40+ and 50+ degree temps predicted this week won’t do them any favors though.
It sure wasn’t the season that I expected. We got the cold that we needed early, that was great. My expectation of snow up to my belt by the middle of January never happened though. We did get some good weekends in, but only about half of what I was expecting.
I want to thank everyone that donated, visited the web page, and visited the Rapids Resort this winter. Thank you!
Here is my favorite fat lady sings YouTube video. They don’t want me to embed it so you will have to click the link.
Next year will be year 20 for The Big Snow Page so there is a pretty good chance that I will be back next year. If it weren’t for the anniversary thing I probably wouldn’t be. It was a very tough winter financially. Donations were way down, I didn’t get as many weekends bartending as I had hoped, and a couple of big jobs that I had lined up didn’t come home. Then in Feb I got really sick and missed a bunch of work and trail time. The end result left me in a pretty bad place.
I love the people that I get to meet and see from the BSP and I like that it helps them. That is the gasoline that keeps this running. I am not in any hurry to quit that, I just need to figure out a better way to support myself in winter and leave time for the BSP blog.
Anyway.. I want to remind you that whitewater rafting at Kosir’s starts April 7th, and that it is one last chance to play in the snow as it roars down the river. In the spring when it is high the Peshtigo is an exceptional whitewater rafting river.
As far as summer storage goes I recommend Star-Tron for gas stabilizer. I have tried Stabil (classic formula), Sea Foam, and StarTron. The StarTron outperformed the other two significantly. While I won’t use Stabil in the gas again I do use their fogging oil. Not only do I run it into the motor, I use it on my exhaust too. It does a great job of keeping pipes from rusting.
Mice love nesting in air boxes and exhaust pipes. Some moth balls under the hood will help keep them out of there, and some steel wool up the ends of the pipes usually stops them from nesting in there.
Well that pretty much covers what I had to cover this morning. Have a good summer and thank you thank you thank you!
RJB