Winter on the ice.

Just in case you live where people are sane winters are mild, let me show you something I saw earlier this week. (Crappy photos taken with my iPod because I had left my camera at home.)

In summer, this is the swimming beach on a nearby lake. 

In winter it is the place where those crazy Norwegians Danes locals drive onto the lake to get to their fish houses. While I was sitting there, two pickup trucks went past me.

Now, ice houses on the lake are no big thing. Anyone who saw Grumpy Old Men knows about the ice house villages that spring up on northern lakes in winter. I spent my high school years in northern Minnesota, where the village plowed a road across the frozen-over lake on the edge of town so that residents on the other side didn't have to drive so far to get into town. I have even grown to accept driving on the lake, although I will not do it myself.

What drew my attention this time are the two fuzzy gray things in the photo below.

Those are fuel tanks -- BIG fuel tanks -- to run the heaters inside the fish houses next to them.

Somehow that struck me as... weird.

As I look at the photo now, it occurs to me to wonder if the two side-by-side blue things at right are Port-o-Potties for the convenience of the fisherfolk...

Comments

[gayle]

Madman wasn't surprised at fuel tanks by the ice shanties, so I guess it makes sense to the ice fishermen. Putting a heat source on top of the ice you're standing on doesn't sound like a good idea to me...
And I won't drive on ice, either.

[claire]

Well, sure those are potties....who would want their butt accidentally stuck to the ice, eh?

[mary lou]

Wierd, and crazy, given how mild this winter has been.

[Cookie]

I think it makes sense to have the potties out there. It's not like those little ice house thingies have indoor plumbing or anything. Right? I live in NorCal. My paper whites are blooming. All that weather stuff is beyond me. :p

[Kym]

Heating the ice . . . sounds like Trouble to me. The potties make perfect sense, though.

[Chris]

With the way the temperature's been all over the place, it hasn't seemed wise to me to trust the ice this year.

[Sheepish Annie]

I guess if you have to be outside you might as well make it as much like inside as possible. That's my philosophy , anyway!

[Soxanne]

Weirder than ice fishing, or a weird sub-set of a weird sport?

[Carrie#K]

Weird. Here it's a civilized 67 degrees.

[bullwinkle]

I can never quite get over the "heating" on ice phenomena. I don't want to drive on it either ;)

[Gillian]

I didn't think the ice was very solid this year. I wouldn't like to try it. The weather here feels like end of March.