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...
