I have to tell you, our weather still won't give up winter mode. We've had "snow showers" most of the day - squalls that roll through like summer rain storms. It's presently partly sunny, 32 degrees, and snowing. Not lightly - really snowing hard. There should be a rainbow out there someplace . . . !

We were in the Hanover area yesterday and there is not much snow there. As we were returning home in the late afternoon, we could clearly see the snow in the mountains north of us. There was a cold wind, even there, so we didn't experience much of a spring break like sometimes when we've been down that way. We did see several deer on the median in the Thetford area - lots of bare ground for them. Later we spotted some turkeys and then in the Ox Bow area, a couple of geese. I tried to get pictures, but we were moving pretty fast and in traffic, so it was a point and shoot operation - no time for zoom.

When we hit West Shore Road at around 6 p.m., we were surprised at how much the its condition had deteriorated. Mud and deep ruts making it hard to find any ridges to ride through some spots. We've seen it worse, but when we found a message on our phone saying Harry's Hardware Store in Cabot needed more Ice-Out tickets, we knew our best chance was to wait until morning and hope it froze good and hard. We got our wish, and made it down to Cabot this morning with no problem, going the usual way, over the Plain. We didn't come back that way - instead, we went to Marshfield (Rte 215 south is pretty bad, too, with lots of pot holes to dodge.) We noticed that John "Woody" Woods has buckets out all around his house near the Bayley Hazen Road. I don't know if he is doing the sugaring or if Dick Spaulding may have tapped the trees. Dick has a large sugar woods in back of his house out on Dubray Road, at the top of the hill, but he may have an agreement with "Woody." We were told "Woody" is chef at some restaurant in Stowe and his little trolley by the beach is for sale.

The road to Cabot was not good, especially this end from Brickett's Crossing Rd. to the cemetery. From there down, it hasn't really melted much, so that end will get worse after the other end is better. Everyone is complaining about the mud this year. I've had the scanner on this morning and heard this conversation:

First guy: "I can't b'lieve how many cars're travelin' on this road!"

A little later, "I just counted 39 cars that'of gone by me here."

Different voice: "Let me get past ya and it'll make it 40."

Another guy chimes in: "Is anybody throwin' rocks attcha yet?"

"Nope. All I got so far is big smiles an' waves."

"Yer doin' good today!"

There was some chatter later about bad spots being reported and what material they would try to use to give it a temporary fix. The frost is nowhere near out, and in some spots the mud goes partway to China, so no amount of fill seems to help.

This morning we stopped in West Danville after making a run to Danville to do some banking, and a friend said she was stocking up so she wouldn't need to go out for a week or so. She's afraid her vintage truck won't survive the mud.

At Hastings Store this morning, we picked up Ice-Out tickets and there were six that had been printed from the website, but whoever left them at the store, left the wrong end of the ticket - the part you are supposed to keep for your records. We don't have a clue who may have left them, but I'm sending them back to the store, so If you made out six paper tickets, four of them in red ink, two in blue except for a red ink correction on one, take the part you kept back to the store, leave it and pick up the receipt parts. Here's the thing: if your pick won, we'd have no way of knowing who you are because nothing identifying you is on this end of the ticket - the part you are supposed to keep.

We always have a few glitches, but we do our darndest to figure it all out so we don't have to discard any tickets. It isn't unusual for people to send in the wrong part of the ticket, and if it comes in the mail, there's either a check enclosed or return address for us to identify the ticket owner. But these were obviously paid by cash.