| April 1st |
The seasons, LIKE greater tides, ebb and flow across the continents. Spring advances up the United States at the average rate of about fifteen miles a day. It ascends mountainsides at the rate of about a hundred feet a day. It sweeps ahead like a flood of water, racing down the long valleys, creeping up hillsides in a rising tide. Most of us, like the man who lives on the bank of a river and watches the stream flow by, see only one phase of the movement of spring. Each year the season advances toward us out of the south, sweeps around us, goes flooding away to the north. -- Edwin Way Teale (Circa 1950) As per the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Cohasset's average high for April Fools' Day is 45, the average low is 23, and 23% of the time we get some precipitation. The weather prediction for today is a high of 55, a low of 36, with no chance of any precipitation. Not that any of that is relevant, of course. |
| April 2nd | The first cabin (cabin 4) has been Spring cleaned and is ready to be occupied, a sure sign that Spring is here! |
| April 3rd | If you look closely you can see that there's a little bit of water along some parts of the shore. Click HERE. |
| April 4th | Click HERE. |
| April 5th | The ice is sure getting dark (click HERE), and starting to open up along the shore (click HERE); both are signs that it's getting close to disappearing. A strong wind and/or a little rain would hurry it along. |
| April 6th |
Wow.......what a sudden change in the ice since yesterday!!! Click HERE to see it. But that was only the North end of the lake, click HERE to see what the South end looks like this morning. PS: The LBL Loons arrived yesterday afternoon! YES!!!! |
| April 7th |
Here are three more Spring notes:
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| April 8th | Cabin # 1 has been Spring cleaned and is now ready for customers!!!!! That makes two of them. |
| April 9th | The lake is now ice-free!!!!!! Nobody picked today but two people picked yesterday so they are the winners. The two people who I owe a lunch to for this year are Colleen (of the Firebug Carlsons) and Laurie G (North Carolina Laurie). Since you both have reservations this summer (one in July and one in August) we can do lunch then. Good job on your guesses! PS: The lake information will be updated soon. |
| April 10th | Back in 1992 when I moved to LBLR, there was a small piece of wood in the shape of a wedge that was used to hold the back door open in the summertime. It was old and beat up but it served it's purpose well. I don't know who made it or when they made it, but I've been using it for almost 26 years. Yesterday Dave L's dog ate it; I guess I'll have to make a new one. |
| April 11th | Here's the ice information in a nutshell: The lake froze 10 days earlier and thawed 9 days earlier than last year. It froze 12 days earlier than the median and thawed 10 days earlier than the median. It was covered with ice for 120 days, which is exactly the same as last year but almost three weeks less than the average. To see the details, click HERE. |
| April 12th | This is a pretty picture, isn't it? It was the first snow in the Autumn of 2011. Click HERE |
| April 13th |
Area business changes since last summer (although not much has happened):
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| April 14th | To Wayne, David, and Parker: Your cabin (number 2) is now up and running.......but it probably wont be Spring Cleaned until this time next week. That leaves only cabin number 3 which, unfortunately, has problems more often than not. But I was particularly careful when I shut it down last fall so I'm confident that this year the opening will be uneventful. We'll soon see. |
| April 15th | I have been informed by North Carolina Laurie that both Cohasett Falcons are back. Click HERE; ours is the Boswell Cam. |
| Easter Sunday | On this day are we allowed to put all of our eggs in one basket???? |
| April 17th | Most of the Spring raking has been done and if there's no significant rain it should be finished up tomorrow. That's about average by the way, but on rare occasions it has been completed as early as late March and as late as early May. |
| April 18th | This is a common sound in this neck of the woods at this time of the year. Click HERE to listen to it. Don't you love it?!?!?! |
| April 19th |
Trouble nourishes Mankind. -- Euripides, from Hippolytus (428 BC) Sigh....... |
| April 20th |
Here's another college memory, if you don't mind. And incidentally, this one was used in a Chronicles entry three years ago this coming July to make a point to North Carolina Laurie, so some of you may remember it:
Back in our days at Michigan State, a friend of mine named Frank Major (we used to call him Mahör) lived for a while in a dumpy little apartment off campus. Since he didn't have a car (which was common back then) and since he lived a fair distance from campus, he used a bicycle to get around. Every night for months he leaned his bike up against his apartment building near a bunch of garbage cans, and no one ever bothered it. But then one evening he leaned it up against one of the garbage cans rather than up against the building. The next morning as he stepped out of the shower, he heard some noise outside and looked out the window just in time to see the garbage man throw his bike into the garbage truck. He yelled out the window but to no avail, and since he was standing in the bathroom naked he could do no more than yell. As a result, his bike, which was his sole means of transportation, was gone forever. And incidentally, in order to explain how the garbage men could make such a mistake, he used to say (and I quote) "It wasn't a real good bike or anything, but I used it every day". PS: Frank's description of his bicycle was a bit understated. I was quite familiar with it and there is no question in my mind as to why the garbage men took it. PPS: While bowling at the campus bowling alley one afternoon, one of us wrote Frank's name on the score sheet as Mahör. During our bowling session a girl on the next lane noticed it, and asked him what country he was from. We thought that was hilarious so at that point he became Mahör forever.......even to this very day. |
| April 21st | Mornings like this are nice and we haven't had one in a long long time. Of course, a temperature of 28 degrees takes some of the pleasure out of it, but it's still nice. Click HERE. |
| April 22nd |
You are not ignorant; you have command of a lot a information. Unfortunately most of it is totally useless. -- Shirley Mickelson (circa 1994) Shirley actually said that to me (more than once, in fact).......but probably not in those exact words. She was a very dear friend who died of cancer 11 years ago today. Her and her husband Ron (also known as Mick) used to own Back O' the Moon Resort and they are the ones most responsible for getting me to Grand Rapids and to LBLR. Although nobody ever recognized her, she has been on my web-site since the mid-1990s. I needed someone to pose for me in a relaxed scene and she agreed to do it. She's the woman sitting in the "love-seat" on the shoreline on this page. Click HERE. And speaking of Mick, he's the central character in THIS and THIS. |
| April 23rd | The first dock was put in the water yesterday, which is great, but a second one will NOT be put in today. To see why, click HERE. |
| April 24th | The future has arrived.......and luckily it turned out to be fine! |
| April 25th | The last two years my friend Bob has spent the winter in Arizona. Last April when he returned to his place on Deer Lake we found about a dozen breaks in the water lines under his house, which took us 8 or 10 hours of dirty, wet, unpleasant labor spread over two days to get his water running again. He will be back tomorrow. One can only hope that he did a better job of shutting it down this year than he did last year. |
| April 26th | Do you realize that it's only 2 1/2 weeks to the fishing opener? With a morning like this (26 degrees, very windy, and snow on the ground) fishing doesn't come immediately to one's mind. At least there's no ice on the lake. |
| April 27th | When looking around here now, it's difficult to believe that we had Spring-like weather just a few days ago. Click HERE. Sigh....... |
| April 28th |
It sifts from Leaden sieves -- It powders all the Wood. It fills with Alabaster Wool The Wrinkles of the Road. -- Sweet Emily (1862) And now for a little gentle complaining, if you don't mind: Yes, Emily is quite correct. Snow does those things as well the other things she enumerates in the rest of her poem. But this is April 28th, for goodness sake. A mere few days ago we had Spring weather; now we have this (see the picture in yesterday's entry above). The temperature has not been above freezing since that picture was taken two days ago so nothing has melted. Now I ask you, is that nice? Well is it? No it isn't! It's cruel, that's what it is! But on the plus side.......it could be worse. Back in mid-April of 2008 we got three feet of snow over a period of only five days. To see what it looked like just "before" we got the third foot, click HERE. Oh well, this too shall pass, as soon as we get some warmer weather, that is. And I, for one, am ready for it. |
| April 29th | Cabin 3 has not been Spring cleaned yet, but the other 5 (with exception of a few "finishing touches") are ready to go for the summer. That's pretty early. |
| April 30th | Tomorrow is May Day and they're saying 2 to 4 inches of snow. What do you think? Will it happen? |
