Think you know winter? Visit the Northwoods of Wisconsin for a winter wonderland experience you'll never forget.
Winter is long, cold, and can be severe in northern climes - but it's also staggeringly beautiful. The first skim of crystalline ice on a freezing lake is the most flawless shade of blue, so pale it's nearly white. Thick, fluffy flakes of snow drifting onto thick pine boughs at twilight is a magical experience.
My first Northwoods winter was one of the 5 snowiest on record. Lucky me.
Having grown up in Nebraska and Iowa, I thought I knew winter. But those are Plains states - as in the Great Plains - and a massive amount of the yearly snowfall blows around due to the heavy gusts of winds that accompany the cold weather. The Northwoods is a completely different beast. It's colder, yes - but lacks much of the miserable wind that I grew up with. In Nebraska and Iowa, the falling snow blows around and often creates blizzard and white-out conditions.
In the Northwoods, the wind is almost a non-issue. There are occasional blizzards, but last year, I only experienced a single white-out. And, for the record, my first Northwoods winter was one of the 5 snowiest on record. Lucky me. Without the misery of the wind, though, it didn't seem bad at all.
Another thing I noticed was that this region is much better equipped for snow removal than the Plains states. Even the tiniest town has a fleet of snow plows - or so it seems - as well as a weathered and rugged salt barn. The apartment complex where I live has a hard-working staff dedicated to salting sidewalks, scraping ice, and plowing the parking lots. We didn't have any trouble last winter.
The salt barns are kind of an oddity to me, being new to the area. I'd never seen one. They're always dark - I don't know, maybe the salt stains the wood? - and they always look like they're about to fall down. They look abandoned, especially in the summer, but every town has one, and they all look exactly the same.
Anyway, up here there's a town called Eagle River (not to be confused with Eagle River, Michigan, a tiny town way up on the Keweenaw Peninsula) which happens to be a snowmobiling Mecca of sorts. There's a nationally famous racetrack there - for snowmobiles, I'm dead serious. The town is gorgeous - a resort destination with a quaint downtown, loads of chic boutiques and souvenir shops, fashionable bars and classic supper clubs, and - of course - a myriad of hotels, inns, motels, and cabins.
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