I bet you thought I got lost on one of our snowshoe treks or something.  Not so - although I'll admit that after two consecutive days trudging along our hillside on snowshoes, I was hurting.  One hip gives me fits every now and then, the result of an old sliding injury back when I was in my late teens, I suppose. But I'm fine now and walking the hill to Jamie and Marie's house every day.  The reason I haven't blogged in a few days is that I've been pretty busy getting the JPA newsletter ready for printing as soon as the ice goes out - and then this is the last hurrah before the end of the Ice-Out Contest, so there are lots of things to deal with.  Our ticket supply is dwindling, but there's always the on-line tickets, so we aren't worried.

It's cold again.  Those wet, warm days have given way to the reality of March.  Last night the temperature went into the teens and we had a sifting of snow on the ground this morning.  Things were frozen back up - a blessing since there was some flooding here and there.  In St. Johnsbury, the area where Jamie is at KATV had to be evacuated because of an ice jam in the river that backed the water up into the parking lot.  I haven't talked to him, but I'm sure nothing was damaged in the building, and I don't know that he even left - but I imagine he moved his car out of danger.

We had a deep mud hole in front of Encarnacion's on Wednesday, but the town came and fixed it right away, as soon as we called and told them about it.  They said roads all over town had bad spots - some worse than others - but they managed to keep traffic moving ok.  In St. Johnsbury on Wednesday, there was absolutely no snow.  We were there in the morning, picking up Ice-Out tickets at St. Jay Hardware, Caplan's and Natural Provisions, and it was very spring-like.   We still have about a foot of crusty snow on the ground.  I think anyone can walk anywhere on it without breaking through, but neither of us has tried.

Diane told me a car came bombing up the pond and ran over the rope to the Ice-Out pallet and flag yesterday.  She was very surprised to see a car going by that close to the shore, but said no harm was done as the rope that secures the setup is well encased in ice after the warm spell.  You can bet all those ice shanties are well frozen into the ice, too.  That means there will be a lot of junk remaining on the ice after they take them off - when they get frozen in they sometimes just take whatever they can pry loose and leave the underpinnings to float off.  Last year there was an unusual amount of debris left on the ice - tarps, wood and junk.

It's Maple Festival time in Cabot tomorrow.  You may want to go down and check out all the activities.   Click on the image at right to enlarge it.