Winter Hike

When I think of Winter I think of a down blanket, a good book and a cup of coco.  Maybe, just maybe, I will think of bundling up and taking a couple of trips in the sled to then come inside for the first thought of blanket, book and coco.  Not so this past Saturday.  Brian is working on a job right here in Portage.  Before he started he told me he'd figure out where it was so that the kids and I could drive by and see him.  But once he started he realized that wasn't an option as there were no roads that drive by his location.  You see he is working on the Wisconsin River. 

They park their vehicles a little over a mile from the job site and then the drive amphibious vehicles called Argos down a short road, over the bank and onto the frozen river. 

After about a half mile on the river they are finally at the job site.

The bank of the pole on the left is erroding into the river and they are building support for it.  The pole on the right will have that problem in the next 'x' years so they will fix it up too.  To build up these supports they have had to break through the ice to get all the way down to the ground.  The company bought Brian special armpit (not hip, but armpit) waders so that he can get into the water to work.  Fortunately it is only about 3 feet of water, but it is still really cold.  The company is making sure they have adequate breaks to warm up in their handy dandy warming ice fishing shack, which they are keeping warm with a propane heater.

Well Brian wanted us all to see this and he figured he could drive the car down to where they start using the argos.  That way we would only have about a 1/2 mile hike to see the job site.  Of course there was no such luck.  Some people who were cross country skiing had parked right in the way of the road.  That meant that all five of us, bundled up in full snow gear, were going for a hike. 

Angela walked while I had Emeric strapped to me in the moby (my baby carrier) and Brian pulled Connor on the sled (though Connor did walk for a little bit).  It was a beautiful sunny day, it was not too cold and there was no wind.  We couldn't have asked for a better day for this hike.  It took us about 2 hours to do around 2 1/2 miles through the unplowed snow.  We hiked down the road, up over the bank, along the top of the river then back on land to follow the power line to get to his job site.  It was a lot of hard work (which included a lot of whining from Angela), but we were all proud of ourselves when we got done.  Fortuanately for me, dinner was cooking in the crockpot so I didn't have to cook once we got home.  We just topped of the day with some fresh cooked hot chocolate and our vegetable beef barley soup.