I did it again - or rather, I DIDN'T do it - check the web cams before dark and post pictures for you.  Sorry.  I'll try to do better tomorrow.  The block is still there, tilted like before, and temperature is still cold - in the teens now and may be in single numbers by morning.  

It has still been cold today, but we had glorious sunshine and that made it so much more pleasant to be out and about even though there wasn't much melting going on.  We took a walk in the woods above our house around noon, just to see if there had been much damage from the high winds we had over the weekend.  Fortunately we didn't find any, but we were in only a small section.  One small maple seemed to have limbs broken off, but we thought that was old damage from another tree coming down and breaking the limbs off.  We didn't examine it closely for claw marks.  We've had bears climb apple trees and break off a branch or two - I imagine the bear was just too heavy for the limb and no doubt had an unexpected ride down to the ground with it.  But apples were the reward, and climbing a maple would be just for fun, I expect.

We visited the A-frame the boys built when they were at Peacham School in the 70s.  It had withstood years of neglect after the teenagers were no longer interested in their cabin in the woods, and finally a big spruce tree fell on it, but miraculously it didn't do it in.  It was located somewhat off the beaten path, so we hadn't seen it for perhaps four or five years, but last week son Bob told us he'd been unable to find it.  That was surprising, since Bob was the one who spent more time there than any of the others involved.  However, wood lots change quickly.  Today we found it, but nut until we'd fought our way through brush and tangles.  The old cabin had finally succumbed to the big spruce and lay flattened under the branches of the now dead tree.  No wonder Bob couldn't find it.

This afternoon we made a last deposit of Ice-Out ticket money to the bank and took the last pile of tickets to Henretta to put on the spreadsheet.  We won't have a final count for several days - she has a lot of tickets to enter. Being out again today was a good opportunity to get pictures of the ponds for comparison to yesterday.  This is how they looked today:  Top, 1st pond from Rt. 2; middle pond from Rt. 2; and the bottom picture is the big pond from W. Shore Rd.  The water that was open in the first two ponds is still mostly frozen, and the water that was on top of the ice on the big pond is frozen now and windswept of snow.  Click on the images to make them larger.