We have a beautiful spring morning here. We walked along W. Shore Rd. to Deeper Ruts Road fairly early this morning and the road was frozen solidly, but we could see that even yesterday there had been some thawing and there were deep ruts on the flat just past our drive. There is also a hole opening up in front of our mailbox where a culvert goes under the road. It has opened in the past and the town has brought fill - which I expect partially fills the culvert until there is a big rain that produces enough water to flush it out. I think the culvert should be replaced, but I guess that's an expensive job and the town may not have money to do it.

The picture at the top of the page was taken this morning. You can see the ice hasn't begun to loosen at all around the edge of the pond. The next picture is of the channel coming into the pond where we look for the first open water each year. Nothing open there, either, but you can see that on the hillside above Rte 15 there is some bare ground showing. That hillside always melts before the west shore, which only gets the sun early in the day. The next few days are going to get gradually warmer (edging near 70 degrees!!!) and by Sunday we could have some rain - even thunder storms as a cold front moves in.

Yesterday a reporter from the Caledonian Record called to find out about the Ice Out. I mentioned there isn't much melting going on yet at the pond, and he said he'd gone out onto the ice to get a good picture of the flag and there was lots of slush - enough so it apparently unnerved him a bit. I don't think he had anything to worry about, but I admit I'd be nervous, too.

I finally got out to measure the total snow pack yesterday. I measured 26 inches. This morning I noticed in my records that on March 7 I had coincidentally measured, too, and reported 40 inches. There was a big difference in the amount of water I measured, though. In March I got 5.48 in. of water from those 40 inches of snow; yesterday I got 8.64 in. of water from just 26 inches of snow. There is a very thick crust that was hard to break through with my measuring tube. The crust is strong enough to walk on easily - I didn't need snowshoes yesterday, and this morning Fred walked in the big field as we were coming back from Deeper Ruts Road and didn't break through at all. It would be a perfect time to walk in the woods, but I don't think we'll get out there today.

I'm finishing up the JPA newsletter ready to mail as soon as the ice goes and we have a contest winner. If the ice isn't out by the end of April, I'm going to mail the newsletter anyway. We have a number of new property owners around the pond this spring, and we want to be sure they know they are welcome and give them an idea of what Joe's Pond Association is all about.

I had this message from Homer this morning regarding the reporter for GQ Magazine I wrote about yesterday:

HI - SHE CAME TO CAMP APRIL 2ND LAST YEAR.

MARGARET AND I WERE ON THE T.V. INTERVIEW

ON OUR DECK.

The clock stopped three days later on April 5, at 2:46 p.m.

As for our Ice-Out game this year, Diane and I don't have a final count on tickets sold, but we are sure we did a little better this year than last. Carl, our "master-logger" will have figure for us as soon as he and his associate have everything tallied. We know we sold quite a few more tickets on line this year, and in spite of what Diane and I worried was a slow last week of March, the last couple of days produced the bulk of tickets sold, as has happened in the past. Now we just have to wait for the flag to sink or float away enough to stop the clock.