Dreaming of spring

We love winter, but enough, already, most cousins are thinking as we enter what seems to be its 13th month. Ah, but before spring can come, the ice on Lake Pepin has to honeycomb, wilt and and vanish. The first step in that process is the passage of an ice cutter, and that won't happen for a while. To whet your appetite, here, courtesy of Uncle Joe, is a photo from a past year of the cutter going through. This was taken on March 27, Easter Sunday, 2005. The ice was still 2 feet thick and tough going, Joe recalls. Meanwhile, here are two stories that ran on the Associated Press wire this week about our favorite body of water: How thick is it? LAKE CITY, MINN. -- In an annual sign that spring is coming, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says it's about to start measuring the thickness of the ice on Lake Pepin. The corps will begin the work Feb. 18. It measures the ice in different spots on the lake each year to predict when the navigation season on the Upper Mississippi will start. Lake Pepin is usually the last part of the river to break up because the current there is slower than on the rest of the upper parts of the river. The average opening date of the navigation season in St. Paul over the past 10 years has been March 20. Not very, apparently OLD FRONTENAC, MINN. -- Two men pulling an icehouse off Lake Pepin fell through the ice while riding an ATV Tuesday [Feb. 10, 2009]. Robert Hoeft, of Frontenac, Minn., and Scott Balster, of Red Wing, Minn., were pulling the icehouse off Lake Pepin around 4 p.m. Tuesday when they fell through near Florence Beach. A passerby called Goodhue County deputies to the scene. Hoeft and Balster were able to pull themselves and the ATV out of the water by the time deputies arrived.Signs were posted in January on Lake Pepin warning ice fishermen of dangers.