So as part of my new drive to treat my body right and be good to it, I went out to get exercise in punishing winter conditions. Went down to the Big Lake - by the way.....it's very cold down by the Big Lake. Windy. Took off my gloves and took a few pics before my fingers started to freeze off.
So here's Lake Michigan this January....the endless horizon of Lake is now a massive shelf of ice as far as the eye can see. I'm on an overlook on a dune here, so I've got a pretty good vantage point. You're looking out at about 10 to 12 miles.
It pretty much just looks like snow...
Lost in translation of the picture really. Hard to get a sense of scale. The vid below helps with that a bit.
Down there, looking kind of brown, are ice dunes where freezing water and ice chunks washed up creating a ridge of ice. As the water receded into ice it left successive ice dune ridges. There's probably a pretty darn large one way, way, way out there farther than I can see and farther than I'm stupid enough to walk.
It was frickin' cold and I wasn't feeling too adventurous and I was traveling alone so I didn't go down to take closer pics of the ice dunes. Maybe in a day or two when it warms up. Best not to climb on 'em. But, you know, most folks do at at least one point in their lives. And right now there's probably not a whole lot of liquid water you can fall into down there.
Went ice fishing a week ago and the ice on Muskegon Lake was between 8 and 10 inches thick.
This ice cover, by the way, is as it should be and very good for the lake levels. The unusually warm winters of late have dramatically reduced winter ice cover, contributing to increased water evaporation and lower water levels.
Here's some tree porn
