Took a sledge hammer from hubby's shop and actually used it to break up the ice patches on my hilly sections of trail, so now the most dangerous parts of the trail are ice free. Lots of work, but won't have to wait for another couple of weeks for the ice to melt. Nice to feel soil under the fat bike tires, for a change, instead of snow and ice.

We do have open water on part of our lake, so for the sake of the record, I will paddle the canoe out so I will be able to say that I paddled, up here, in March. Doesn't happen very often.

The open water has attracted some migrating waterfowl. Spotted Common Mergansers, a Hooded Merganser pair and lots of Ring-necked Ducks, which we see a lot on our smaller north woods lakes. No Wood Ducks, yet, but they are more of a fair weather species, so will be here, later, when the weather warms a bit. Have lots of them nest here on our little lake. Such beautiful birds.