This report is written by Lorraine Anderson (lorraine@bwca.cc). She is part of a group of three seniors that have been looking at wildflowers in Cook County, Minnesota. They have gone out almost every Wednesday for over 20 years and love it, even in the winter. But of course there aren't any flowers in the winter!!

Again, another beautiful day. there is some budding of leaves, but very little. We went up the Gunflint Trail and turned right on the Greenwood road. Two tenths of a mile in we stopped and saw "lots of good stuff", evergreen leaves, that is, of Pipsissewa, Gay Wings, Linnea, Bearberry and more. We must remember to go back and see these in bloom. Then down Pine Mountain Road, stopping and walking now and again. We were so impressed with the many beautiful White Pines. We passed Elbow Lake, covered with ice. In fact most of the lakes we saw were almost covered with ice, except for Star Lake. It was wide open. It is a small lake and probably shallow.
An unusual thing we observed this morning was that there was skim ice even on Lake Superior. That is so unusual for this time of the year.
We had another wiener roast at Two Island Campground site #8. The lake was mostly ice but the nice beach was open enough to wash hands.
We saw one moose, three deer - twice and two grouse.