April Fools

Foolishly, my plans were to drive up this weekend with my father and my wife Jo to kickoff the building season. The idea was for me to stay up for the week, while Jo and my dad were to return on Monday. This plan was based on the forecast for “seasonal weather” this week.

By Saturday the forecast had changed to call for cold weather, but the weather was suppose to be okay on Sunday and Monday. Since we were celebrating Easter on Saturday, I figured I might as well go up for a couple of days and get a few odd jobs done and allow my dad to see the progress on the house.

So Sunday morning, my dad and I decided (Jo was the smart one— she stayed home.) to take a short trip up to the house. I should have realized a half-hour into the trip that mother nature was about to pull an April Fool’s joke on us. By the time we got to Rockford it started snowing. My dad asked me if I wanted to turn around, but I thought it would stop.
Dad installing a bluebird house by the front gate.

Well it did stop by the time we got to Madison and then the sun even came out. It turned out that Sunday was an okay day, but rather cold and blustery. My dad and I put up a bunch of new bluebird houses and he got to see the cordwood walls. All and all it was an okay day.

My dad installing a bluebird house by the front gate.

But later in the day, the “weather forecasters” were talking about getting some snow by morning. Maybe enough to stick on the ground. Not wanting to take any chances, we got up early in the morning and got on the road by 7:00 A.M. It was sunny then, but the clouds were gathering and we were chasing them all the way home. About an hour after we arrived home the first flakes started to fall. The end result was about 3″ of snow in the La Crosse area and even a couple here in NE Illinois. (As I am writing this tonight, I can hear sleet pounding on the windows. Arghh!)

So far this has been a very frustrating “Spring.” If the temperatures can at least stay in the 40’s, I should be able to live comfortably in my makeshift cabin, but every time they predict warm weather it ends up snowing! There latest prediction (or dart board throw) shows things warming up by this weekend into the 50’s. If it does, I’ll be up north working. Is it too good to be true?

Stay tuned…