Camp Nebagamon

Updates

Caretaker Joe’s Own Pre-Camp

By Joe Crain

It has been a very hot and dry June here in the north woods of Wisconsin. Rather than the average highs of the lower to mid-70s, we were forced to endure early June temperatures ranging from the high 70s to mid-80s including a near-record 94 degree day on the 8th. With but a short bit of relief for a few days mid-month when the temperatures returned to average, things got hot again through the end of the month with temperatures returning to the mid-to-upper-80s and a couple of days again reaching the lower 90’s. Although most of the month was also very humid with readings in the 60 and 70 percent range we had virtually no rain the whole month! With only a couple of days with a trace amount of rain it was not until the 29th that a significant amount of rain fell, about a half an inch. I admit that I am stretching the definition of significant here a bit but with basically no rain having fallen in a month that would normally have seen about 3 ½ inches, now a ½ inch seems significant.

I have to admit that with everything being so abnormal this year, I have been doing a lot of grasping for normalcy. For instance on the day that counselor training should have begun, I made the small change of starting to wear my Camp Nebagamon T-shirts to work every day, as I have for many seasons now. It was a small gesture, but it has helped me move forward each day as I head up the hill from my house to an empty camp. Of course with the camp’s cancellation, we didn’t wake camp up in the usual way, by putting out all of the gear and decorations that are normally the kick off to the new season ahead. It is a lot of work for us caretakers and the select crew of pre-campers to get all of the camp season gear out of Herb’s, the Bike Shack, Swamper 2, and the Little House basement, and move all of the docks off of the beach and set up in the lake. Pre-camp set up is a ritual that has taken place every year since that first summer back in 1929 (although the volume of stuff and the storage locations have changed since then I’m sure).

The Swamp Gouger, with socially distanced white chairs behind him

After not doing it this year I was feeling pretty unsettled and was having a tough time keeping my head in the game for the seasons to come. So the other day I figured why not make another grasp at normalcy and allow myself to go through an (abbreviated) pre-camp set up ritual. So I focused on the area around the Big House, where we’re spending a lot of our time. I got out the swinging bench first, and then thought we could use some of the Adirondack chairs out, so I set up a small, properly physically distanced ring of them in their usual spot on the Big House west side lawn. Things started to seem a little more normal, so with the encouragement of Camp Director Adam Kaplan, who saw me trying to normalize things a bit and seemed to get what I was up to, I went ahead and set up the Swamp Gouger, complete with rope and signs. On a roll and starting to feel a bit more energized and hopeful as I was passing through a normal spring ritual at camp, I went ahead and put up all of the whirly gigs in their spots around the Big House. I followed the abbreviated set up with a little sprucing up with the weed whacker, and my grasp at normalcy was complete. The Big House lawn has some of its normal splash of color and whimsy back for its all too abnormal 92nd season.

Hoping you are all enjoying the extra time with your families during this unusual summer and are able to find a bit of normalcy during this uncertain time, it’s Caretaker Joe At Camp.

Caretaker Joe’s To-Do List

By Joe Crain

May is a very special time around the grounds of Camp Nebagamon. The grass starts to green up, the trees start to leaf out, and the migratory birds start to return to their summer homes. The newly born critters start to emerge from there birthing blinds and dens. And we caretakers start to move about the grounds with a faster gate and a determined, but slightly anxious, look on our faces as the opening deadline gets closer. The “Jobs” list starts losing the “Wan-a-do’s” and starts filling up with the “Got-a-do’s”. All of the finished winter projects that have been waiting in the Wanegan are taken out and installed in their rightful places about camp.

This is my 25th May as a full time caretaker here at Camp Nebagamon and for the first 24 springs what I described above has been, for the most part, the way this spring has progressed. Early in the month I was again delighted as I watched the flocks of geese flying north toward their summer homes. As the local birds settled down around the area, many of the flocks headed farther north to their summer breeding grounds, passing very far over head in the familiar V pattern, accompanied with the distant “honk, honk” song they sing to each other. This year we were treated to what seemed to be an unusually large number of swan flocks heading to their summer homes. And I had the same thought as every year, “Will this be the year that a pair of them finally decides to make Lake Nebagamon their breeding lake?”

By now, the grass has started to green up and the trees are finally fully leafed out. They were both a bit late to start due to our very dry spring, but after a good couple of rains in the last week things have started to jump out of the ground — it seemed like the trees were fully leafed out in just a matter of days after the rain fell. As far as the baby critters are concerned it has been a bumper crop this year. We have active fox dens with several pups cruising about in the back-stop hills of both target shooting and archery! Caretaker Andy has reported seeing fawns about, and reported that he could have stepped right on a little guy hiding in the open at the side of the woods the other day. Andy’s wife Amy discovered a litter of rabbit kits in here garden by the garage of the caretaker’s house and a neighbor at the end of the ally also came upon a litter in their yard! I have also come upon several Robins nests with eggs already laid in them. 

And as you can imagine, my 25th May at camp has been anything but usual as our determined but anxious expressions have been replaced with expressions of uncertainty and concern. Concerned about how our own families and the camp family as a whole are faring through what is a very serious health crises in many of the cities and towns around the nation and world. And the uncertainty of whether we would be able to see campers playing on the hill this season. Well as the decision was made, that for the safety of all concerned, that indeed there would not be campers playing on the hill this season, my quickened “May” gate slowed down a bit and my heart broke just a little. And now, the work list has suddenly shifted from only got-a-do’s back to some wan-a-do’s for the summer ahead.

Keeping a fire burning for you this summer at camp, and hoping all of you stay healthy and happy until we can all once again gather at the Council Fire Ring, it’s Caretaker Joe at Camp.

Caretaker Joe Gives the LJ Village a New View

By Joe Crain

A duck wades in the receding ice

We were treated to a complete weather sampler in the month of April up here in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. At the start of the month it almost seemed like spring was upon us as the first week of the month served up a good helping of temperatures in a seasonal range of highs in the 40s and low-50s and lows in the upper-20s to lower-30s. The remaining snow pack started to melt at a nice steady pace and the lake started to show signs of thaw with the shore-line ice opening up out about 30 feet or so. Just as we were starting to really believe that the corner had been turned and that this year’s April was actually going to be spring like the past few years… April shocked us with major snow storms! Things turned cold and the temps dropped down to highs in the mid-30s and lows in the mid-teens. The open water along the shore refroze every morning and stayed that way for several days. Our hearts really sank mid-month when a big “winter” storm appeared on the forecast radar at almost the same date that we received 14 inches last year! Fortunately for us up north, the storm pushed to the south and our neighbors down there got six inches of snow. We only had to put up with a couple inches. Thankfully, things turned warmer again and though we have still been waking up to cold mornings in the upper-20’s, the highs have been consistently reaching into the mid-40’s with an occasional serving of the mid-50’s. Although we have reached the end of the month and are now starting to see the temps bump into the low-60’s on a few days, we still have persistent piles of snow in the shady areas of the north side of buildings. And finally, a few helpings of rain were served up near the end of the month in our weather sampler, with the past few days bringing us almost two inches. With next week forecasted to be in the mid-60s for highs and mid-40s for lows all of that rain should green things up nicely and bring us all into that wonderful spring mindset of renewal and growth.

A new view from LJ-2!

We caretakers have been staying busy around the grounds of camp getting things ready for the coming season. I spent a good chunk of the month replacing the, in some cases ancient, and in most cases rusted and heavily patched window screens in the water front cabins of the Lumberjack Village. I replaced EVERY screen in LJ-1, -2, -3, and Weyerhaeuser with the same system I had developed several years ago in the Axeman Village that allows for the screens to be serviced without the need to remove all of the window blind tracks to get at the screen edge. This makes future repairs about 10 times easier! Caretaker Andy spent his time this month doing some much needed repairs and painting in the caretakers house (his camp home) a spot that always seems to get pushed to the bottom of (and often off) the priorities list. And for the last week he has been readying all of camp for the annual “return of the water” to camps plumbing system. He has to go into and often under every building in camp and reconnect all of the joints he undid last fall to drain and winterize the system. And in the surest sign that spring is really here, Caretaker Jack (the seasonal Caretaker) has come back on board and has been hard at work going cabin to cabin assuring that the whole facility is up to date with a few new fire prevention codes that the state has mandated.

Happy to see that the daffodils are almost ready to bloom, bringing a much needed spark of color to the Northwoods, it’s Caretaker Joe At Camp.

 

Caretaker Joe Sees Signs of Spring

By Joe Crain

Snow is beginning to melt!

At last we are starting to see some signs of spring up here in the North Woods of Wisconsin. Some patches of grass are starting to emerge in the southern exposure areas and under the large trees. Night time temperatures are continuing to dip into the upper 20s, but the day time highs have been consistently reaching into the lower 40’s so the melting of our abundant snow cover has been at a pace slow enough to keep flooding concerns very low in the area. I took a quick visit over to our cabin on the Amnicon river this past weekend and the river was high but well within its banks. I’m confident that there is little danger of flooding as the remaining foot or so of snow still on the ground melts away over the next couple of weeks. Lake Nebagamon still has a way to go before the ice comes off! Caretaker Andy was out doing some solo ice fishing last week and reported about 20 inches of ice still remaining. He said he did have to wade through open water from the shore of Lorber Point for a few feet to get to the ice. Farther off shore the ice was still solid and substantial; as a matter of fact, he saw a truck enter the ice from a shore line cabin on the south side of the lake where the tall trees have shaded the shore and kept the ice in that area from deteriorating. He’s had a few days catching some pan fish and had no luck at all on another occasion. He said it was good to get out of the house and get some positive physical distancing done. Although he did have one encounter with a fellow angler on the ice that he said walked toward him with his hand

The shop is bustling

out for a “howdy do” hand shake, Andy said he was able to politely decline the physical contact and was able to maintain his six foot personal perimeter while exchanging fish tales with the fellow ice angler. The most enjoyable sign that spring is well under way has been the gradual return of our summer birds. In just the last week I have begun having regular sightings of Robins, Mourning Doves, Red Wing Black Birds, Grackles and most fun of all have been the small flocks of Swans passing over with their long outstretched white necks and their irregular high- and low-pitched honks. I wish we would get a mating pair to take up residence on Lake Nebagamon!

With only a few slight changes to our usual routine we have been able to keep plugging away at the needed maintenance around camp. Wisconsin issued its “safer-at-home” order on March 25, and deemed “Maintenance” as an essential service so after a little brainstorming with the Boise office we came to the conclusion that the two of us could continue working safely. It has been pretty easy in such a large shop to keep our distance, and now that the weather has started to turn, we will be able to work out in camp separately. I was able to build and repair eight screen doors this month. Caretaker Andy had a week of stay at home vacation and has been doing some needed maintenance on the caretaker’s house that always has been shoved to the bottom (and often off) of the “To Do” list since his return to active duty. This week I will be heading out into the Villages to do some badly needed screen replacement!

Looking forward to ice out so my distancing can be done in style in a boat out on the lake its Caretaker Joe At Camp.

Work on some new doors

Caretaker Joe Traverses the Trail

By Joe Crain

It has been a rather long winter for us here in the far north of Wisconsin due to the early November cold and early season large snow falls. Still, there has been one aspect of this season that has made the long duration tolerable for some of us: we have not had a single day with a below zero high temperature reading! We came close several times but the mercury always stopped at one or two degrees above zero. Now to be clear we did spend plenty of nights under extra blankets enduring temperatures in the teens and twenties below zero but the mercury always managed to climb above the zero mark in the day. We normally see a week (or sometimes two!) with the mercury never clearing the zero threshold! And here we sit on February 28th without a single day time high in negative territory. So this winter has been long but not grueling, although I’m sure that for some of my neighbors the record breaking cloud cover in January was pretty grueling to endure! Thankfully that trend completely reversed itself in February and we were treated to plenty of sunshine throughout the month, as well as plenty of well above average temperatures, and have been treated to several days in the forties and upper 30’s. The month has also been very dry with only dustings of snow and very little accumulation.

Unfortunately all of the above average temperatures and sun this month have turned the roads and trails in the area into treacherous sheets of ice. The dog trails I maintain in my back yard for our micro-mutts have gotten so bad that I have been searching the internet for sets of micro-doggie ice skates! I think I have finally found the one thing you can’t get on the internet! On the fortunate side of things our snow base is so deep (we still have about 24 inches on the ground in most places) that though the groomed trails are hard and icey and the ungroomed back country trails are still very skiable. I have had the pleasure of several Sunday mornings spent on the North Country National Scenic Trail that passes through the Brule River State Forest just miles from camp. Trail heads of which are quite near some areas that should be quite familiar to camp alumni, Stones bridge canoe landing and the Winneboujou canoe landing on the Brule River. Though this trail is designed as a summer hiking trail, it is very skiable and very well marked with the NCNST’s signature blue blaze on tree trunks along the way. And with the aid of my phone GPS app navigation along the trail is a breeze. If you live in a northern tier state I highly recommend the trail, it stretches from New York to North Dakota and passes through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota along the way and is well maintained by hundreds of volunteers.

Around the camp shop the winter work that we filled the Wanegan with is almost finished. I am wrapping up a big Rec-Hall chair repair project; 30 chairs got new laminated curved backs that I built from scratch! Caretaker Andy rebuilt and repaired a half dozen big house screens and is currently repairing some of the old whirly gigs that decorate the Swamper Hill in the summer. And we are both hoping for an actual spring this year so we can finally get out of the shop and tackle many of the outdoor projects we hope to get finished before the buses role up to the front gate this June.

Encouraging you all to not wait for the warmth of summer to put your camp learned skills to work, get outside now and hike, bike, ski or snowshoe and explore your local trails, it’s Caretaker Joe at Camp

New-old chair backs

Caretaker Joe is Trekkin’ and Truckin’

By Joe Crain

As I look around outside it definitely looks like the middle of winter, with about 27 inches of snow covering the ground and most of the trees sagging a bit with a generous coating of white. But with the temperatures hovering right around the freezing mark of 32 degrees for the past two weeks, it sure hasn’t felt much like the last week in January. Our historic average temperature for this week is 19 degrees for highs and one degree for the overnight lows, so it has been hard to match the visual with the tactile for the last couple weeks. And with the forecast calling for temps at or near 40 degrees for the first couple days of February I guess the sensory contradictions will continue.

The ample early snow fall, you may recall we had an epic 20-inch storm at the beginning of December that was quickly followed by a couple 10-inch storms, has maintained a very good skiable base in the area despite the bouts of warm temperatures and even a few days of rain fall. As I mentioned at the end of December’s article, all of that too-deep-to-groom snow was actually the perfect situation for me as I prepared for this winter’s back country skiing vacation in the Sylvania Wilderness, just a couple hours’ drive to camps east on US Highway 2 in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The Sylvania Wilderness is an 18,000 acre patch of old growth forest at the southern edge of the nearly 1,000,000 acre Ottawa National forest that stretches from the shores of Lake Superior south to the border of Wisconsin near the town of Land-O-Lakes. The Wilderness is one of the two remaining patches of pristine never cut old growth forest remaining in this part of the country. The other never cut patch of forest is an area many of you campers and alumni may have visited with camps tripping program, the Porcupine Mountains State Park. The Porkies area is located at the north western edge of the Ottawa National Forest’s superior shore border. This year’s back country ski adventure was a big departure from my last two winter’s trips in that I was going solo this year. My trips of the past two winters were with small groups with guides that did all of the tracking and trail cutting as we went — this year I was on my own and had to stomp trail and track the trail by myself in an area I had never been before. Needless to say, I was a bit apprehensive while planning my trip and my planed routes for each of the days I was to be in the wilderness. As a matter of fact, I had started planning for the trip just after returning from last year’s Yellowstone National Park adventure, I figured if I was going to be on my own in the middle of 18,000 acres of uninhabited wilderness, I could not be too prepared. I had learned from my two Yellowstone trips what I would need to carry in my pack, what distances I could reasonably expect to cover in a day, the techniques needed to climb steep inclines and survive steep descents, and, though my Yellowstone guides seemed to disagree with this, how important it was to stick to the established trails in order to avoid having to go over and under downed trees and other under growth obstacles. The National Forest Service does a superb job at keeping the trails in the Wilderness cleared but maintains no markers along the trails so my only uncertainty left by the day of my first outing was weather I was going to be able to find and keep to the trail, which isn’t so easy when the worn track was deep under snow.

Our intrepid caretaker braves the cold!

My planned strategy to overcome the fact that I was soloing and had to pack trail on my own was to plan all of my routes as in/outs, ski half of the day into the Wilderness and then ski my own track out again, rather than doing loops in which I would have to stomp trail the whole day. With this method I had the added advantage of not having to focus on tracking the whole way and could just enjoy the scenery and skiing as I followed my tracks on the way out. I was also able to push my distances a bit farther because I knew the trip out was going to be much easier than the trip in. Keeping this in mind also helped me through some of the physically more challenging sections of trail, big climbs up on the way in meant easy descents on the way out. Tracking through complicated routs on the way in would be a piece of cake when I merely had to follow my tracks on the way out! My solo back country strategy worked out perfectly and I was able to average about ten miles a day, which left me tired but not exhausted at the end of each outing. With each day’s trek my navigational skills improved as my ability to see the slight dent in the snow cover were the heavily used summer trail track was etched into the ground deep below the snow cover. I started to get excited by the sight of cut dead fall that helped mark the narrow trail, and indicated that I was definitely on the right track.

The old growth forest I trekked through was amazing! Huge groves of Birch, Maple, Hemlock and Ash trees that all averaged the girth of the large white pines we have around camp! It was mind boggling to think that this was once the norm from the Porcupine Mountains and the shore of Lake Superior inland to the south for hundreds of square miles! The other much more troubling thought that kept creeping through my head as I worked my way through this beautiful Wilderness is that it only took the logging companies a few decades to cut it all down, except for these two relatively small patches that were thankfully preserved, one hopes for ever.

Starting to plan for next winter’s Back Country Skiing Adventure its Caretaker Joe At Camp.

Caretaker Joe Skis into the New Year

By Joe Crain

When I left off my article last month I was wondering if the predicted storm was going to boom or bust. Well, though it reached us a day later than predicted, it defiantly boomed. Ironically my use of the term boom was quite apt as this storm started out as a “bombogenesis” or “bomb cyclone” as some more excitable meteorologists call it. According to the national weather service a storm undergoes bombogenesis when the storm’s central barometric pressure drops at least 24 millibars (a millibars is a way of measuring air pressure) in 24 hours. When this particular storm hit the west coast it only took 18 hours for the air pressure to drop the required 24 millibars creating what is described as essentially a winter hurricane over land! And that is exactly what the storm looked like as it was tracked by radar and moved across the country heading for Lake Nebagamon. When it finally reached us it had already dropped feet of snow in the Rockies and left a 20-inch swath of snow across the length of South Dakota. Then it hit Minnesota and turned north, and blasting us for 2 days with pounding 1- and 2-inch-an-hour snow and wind gusts into the 50 mile an hour range. When it finally passed out of our region on December 1st we were left with just over 20 inches of snow on top of the 10 inches we had received just before Thanksgiving Day. Boom, just like that we were thrown into what looked like the end of January, 21 days before the 1st day of meteorological winter! Four foot snow banks suddenly lined all of the roads; many streets in Duluth and Superior had so many buried immovable cars on them that they are still clearing that snow two weeks later! Here at camp we spent a full work day plowing the circle drive behind the Big House and hand digging in to the propane tanks and doorways into the areas we need to have access to throughout the winter months.

The somewhat tarnished silver lining to the storm was that it delivered plenty of snow to kick off the 2019 ski season in the area! The tarnish on that silver though was that the Miracle on Snow, my 1975 Artic Cat Pantera snow mobile that I use to groom the bike trails through out camp into ski trails, can’t handle more than 10 inches or so of snow at a time! What is an avid cross country skier to do? Break out the back country skis and stomp out the trails with leg power, of course!! My investment in the short but very wide back country ski package last winter is paying big dividends this year! Stomping your way through 20-inches-plus of snow is a lot more work and much slower than machine grooming. On the “Miracle” it takes me about an hour to groom the whole five mile CNST (Camp Nebagamon Ski Trail) into skiable tracks. On the BC’s I made it about 1.3 miles in just under an hour on my first outing. My second outing lasted about an hour as well and I added about an additional mile past the tracks of my first outing. On the third trail blazing effort I skied over the first two miles of already laid track and was able to add an additional mile in about one hour and 45 minutes, bring my tracked in length up to about 3.25 miles. All of this may seem like a lot of work but I look at it as productive exercise rather than work and with my upcoming back country ski trip to the Sylvania Wilderness area of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, a non-motorized old growth preserve in the heart of the Ottawa National Forest — it is great preparation. I will be spending five days solo skiing through the huge trees on the ungroomed trails and lakes of the Sylvania wilderness. With our winter break just ahead and all of that deep snow in camp I should be in tip top shape for this year’s winter “Big Trip”.

Determined to track the full five miles of the CNST with leg power alone, it’s Caretaker Joe At Camp.

Caretaker Joe Sends Up a Weather Balloon

By Joe Crain

It was an interesting month of weather here in the forest lands of northeastern Wisconsin. The colder than average trend we had been passing through continued with the first half of the month descending into January like temperatures. Next we had a sudden reversal in the colder than normal trend that put us into spring like temperatures. And finally the month wrapped up with a week of near normal temperatures that brought us two big snow storms that made it seem more like the month of Christmas rather than that of Thanksgiving.

Snow – I mean leaf blowing!

The taste of January we received started on November 5th when our already 10-degree-below-average temperature trend turned into a 10 day stretch of 20-to-30 degrees below average! So instead of waking to the expected upper 20s or lower 30s, we were starting our days in the lower teens and single digits! The highs during these ten days were even harder to take with the mercury never rising out of the mid-teens. On the twelfth of the month the temps hit the lowest and most January like when we experienced a morning low of -1 degrees and a day’s high of 18 degrees. This burst of January was almost enough to give us one of the earliest ice overs of the lake ever recorded, which would have really been something considering that the lake had no ice at all at the start of the month and was ¾ covered by that cold morning of the twelfth. It was so close that I actually found myself cheering on the cold snap that was making our annual week of wood splitting a rather uncomfortable test of our ability to tolerate cold! Unfortunately the extremely cold nights were also joined by a steady breeze that kept the main body of the lake out from camps waterfront from freezing over completely, and kept this year’s ice over from being a record.

Strangely our temperatures took a huge swing to above average territory for the first time in about 3 months on the 16th when we suddenly found ourselves in a stretch of 40+ degree weather. The sun which we hadn’t been seeing much of also made an appearance and our false spring continued long enough to deice the lake almost completely. The two bays out from Lorber point went from completely iced over to nearly 80 percent open by the end of that week! And the main body of the lake went from ¾ covered to just some clinging shore ice. This rapid ice over/deicing was a first for me in my 24 year history with Lake Nebagamon. I have seen the lake completely iced over and then open up a bit before refreezing but never such a rapid freeze up followed by an almost complete deicing and all in a 2 week period in the month of November to boot, just wild.

Somebody get Paul a coat!

Well, the month wrapped up in just as wild a manor with 2 December like snow storms in the span of just 4 days. The first dropped about 10 inches of snow on us in about 24 hours on the 27th, disrupting my travel plans to the St. Paul, MN area to spend Thanksgiving with my family. It was a wind packed, lake effect enhanced storm that dropped two inches each hour. The second storm has been promised to be greater than the first according to the local meteorologists. It is predicted to bring us 12-18 inches of snow over the next 2 days. Fortunately this morning we did not wake to the predicted 2-inches-per-hour snow fall of the first half of the storm and the howling winds predicted have barely reached the level of a breeze. The real radar images are nothing like the “future radar” imaginings of the “modals”, European or American. It seems that all of the dire predictions and stay in place warnings have been premature, at least for day one. Things are looking pretty dicey over the Dakotas currently on the radar though, so who knows, maybe tomorrow will be a real blaster and we might get the 12-18 inches predicted. I hope not, because that much snow all at once won’t allow me to get the trails in camp groomed for skiing because the “Miracle on Snow”, my 1975 Artic Cat Pantera snowmobile, can only handle about 8 inches at a time!

Keeping an eye on the weather radar to see if this storm will boom or bust its Caretaker Joe, At Camp.

Caretaker Joe’s Dream Job…

By Joe Crain

The rain really brings out the fall colors!

When I signed off last month I was hoping for some dry weather and some outside time. Well, Great Nature had plans of its own and warm and dry were not in them! What came was more wet, more cold, and more working in doors. Though there were glimpses of normality on a few days for the most part, the first three weeks of October were 10-to-15 degrees below average. The rain trend continued as well and we received over four inches of rain. Camp even had our first snow of the off season on the twelfth of the month! Luckily it was warm enough on the ground that though it snowed for most of the day, little to none of it stuck around long, although I did see a few cars at the local market with a couple inches of accumulation on them. By the nineteenth the daily rains had finally stopped, and that weekend we enjoyed a few days of gorgeous 60-degree temperatures. Though the warmth didn’t last but a few days, the rain had finally stopped for the month and now we are dry but very cold with temps now back to 10-to-15 degrees below average, which this time of year means we are waking up to the teens in the mornings and staying below freezing in the afternoons! The little pond behind our house has been iced over for nearly a week but Lake Nebagamon has no sign of ice formation yet.

Caretakers Andy and Jack used the additional indoor time we were “blessed” with to strip the Big House main entry hall walls all the way up to the second floor landing of all of the 90 years of historical photos and memorabilia and applied a couple of coats of fresh paint. As we like to say around here it was a “big job”; just the annual staff photos alone numbered near ninety, that’s a lot of hangers to remove and holes to spackle! When the time came to put all of that back up Caretaker Andy spent a little extra time rearranging all of them and was able to avoid putting any staff photos on the stair well walls, as they had been, this made them vulnerable to getting banged of the wall when carrying things up or down the stairs. We have averaged about three glass replacements a year in my twenty-four years as a caretaker and the new arrangement, though barely noticeable, should alleviate that frustration for both us caretakers and the poor fellows who it happens to.

Decommissioned bunks lookin’ dreamy

Hey, I have some rather exiting news for the cabin counrselors staff – They will all be sleeping in new beds next summer! We have finally entered the last phase of the “Junk the Old Bunks” project. As you can imagine that with nearly 300 camper and cabin staff beds in camp, this has been a very costly under taking that has had to be spread out over many years. Last year saw phase four of the project with the Lumber jack village camper bunks and bunk ladders being replaced. Next spring will see all of the counselor beds being replaced, and all of the hodge-podge of wooden bunk ladders that are left getting replaced with sleek new uniform steel bunk ladders. All of the worn out steel bed frames got hauled to the scrape dealer and I got to spend my rainy start to October dismantling and cutting up the old wooden bed frames and wooden ladders. The wooden bunks that we still had left and in service were World War II surplus beds that Muggs had obtained after the war and were stamped with the date of 1942! That’s 77 years of service! Some of our current campers Great Grandfathers may have slept in those very same beds when going through basic training, and  grandfathers and fathers that attended camp most certainly did.

Waking up to 18-degree mornings, and starting to get that skier’s itch in my feet a bit early this year… it’s Caretaker Joe At Camp.

 

Caretaker Joe’s Stormy September

By Joe Crain

Down came the rain and washed the spider out!

With this summer’s weather trend I had such high hopes for getting some outdoor projects done this September as family camp was winding down. I hope you all recall this summer season at camp was marked by particularly stellar weather. Hardly any rain fell from the first day of camp right through family camp. It was so dry this summer that the docks all had to be lowered mid-season, to keep campers from walking straight out to the diving platform! But with a day of hard work shared by the caretakers and the waterfront staff, things were put right and it was safe to dive again. We continued to get little rain for a week or so after the dock move day and were starting to wonder if it was going to be a season with two dock-lowerings. But alas, a few late summer storms seemed to stabilize the lake level and the dock height remained good through family camp. And although we had to wake up to some, by southerner standards, chilly mornings in the month of August, all and all it was a very warm summer by northerner standards. Frankly, on those mornings when I was seeing campers in wool caps and jackets, I was happy to get into some long pants and my beefy-t shirt for a spell of coolness because my northland-seasoned body doesn’t do well when the summer temps soar above the lower-80’s. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t let the temp get above 80 degrees all summer long! Well, as I alluded to above, things stayed warm and dry right through Family Camp. But not long after the last of the Family campers and seasonal staff had headed to their respective home bases things took a major turn in the opposite direction in the weather department here in the Northwoods of Wisconsin! The daily temps skipped right over the usual early September offerings of mid-70 highs and mid-50 lows, and instead we were punished with temps 10 degrees below both of those norms… And so much for the nice dry weather. By mid-month we had enough rainfall to make up the whole summer’s deficit! The rain wasn’t satisfied with getting things back to average though and with this morning’s four inches that all fell in about 4 hours, the month is nearing a 12-inch total rain fall! I must add that we did have a few warm days but with only about 6 days of full sun all month, they really didn’t stand out.

Old Rec Hall tired floor…

Now to get back to that sentence about “high hopes” that I left dangling at the top of this article; I had been hoping that this would be the fall that I could get back to replacing more of the old, tired, and rusty screens found on a few of the cabins, and most exciting of all I was hoping to get the last of the bike trails in the CNBT system cut through the woods and a reroute of ‘Maureen’s Crossing’ to the backside of the Axman village cabins. But the continually rainy weather stopped those hopes from ever getting off the ground, though I did get to walk and plan the Maureen’s reroute on one of our few dry days.

…and new!

Instead of being out and about, we ended up working under the cover of the rec-hall for most of the month. We got all of the rec hall furniture re-footed and stored and did the post season floor cleanings. We had so many rain days this month that we were able to replace a substantial amount of cracked and worn out tile of the kitchen floor. It rained so much that I personally was able to pull up and replace 60 square feet of tile. Unfortunately, we also exposed some major subfloor rot in another section of the kitchen, and are still in the process of addressing the issues we exposed. Personally, I’m hoping we have run out of rainy days and we can put finishing the indoor projects off for a while.

Looking forward to getting dry and outside, it’s Caretaker Joe At Camp.

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