A few red-winged blackbirds and a flock or two of sandhill cranes arrived over the weekend. Maple sap was running. Like usual for the start of March.
But it still isnât a usual winter for ski resorts. If it were, the downhill season at Swiss Valley Ski & Snowboard Area in Jones would toast its finale this Sunday â typically a week into March. Instead, spokesman Mike Panich says the resort has booked its âSlush Cupâ contest (a sort of farewell party) for March 14 with the option of staying open even longer if the weather permits and visitors keep coming.
Snowmelt or not, the resort recently looked more like it was ramping up operations, not chilling out, stoked by the momentum from a super-busy season when weekend ski rentals often ran out. Jamie Stafne, who oversees operations, says this seasonâs attendance will surely âblow the record for the past two decades.â
WATCH NOW: Indiana U.S. Sen. Todd Young running for second term in 2022
U.S. Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., confirmed Tuesday he is running next year for a second term representing the Hoosier State in the U.S. Senate.
Young said in a video message he is proud of the conservative results he s delivered over the past five years. But a sustained effort is needed to do the work it takes to make America great. This is not a slogan. It s the undertaking of our generation â no small task, Young said. I m running for reelection to see that a conservative vision becomes reality for the next generation of Hoosiers.
Tyler Spence sets his keister in the dune snow, with a harness around his torso as a taut line rises to a kite perched overhead in a steady wind. Itâs the same sort of kite (more like a sail) that drags surfers across the Lake Michigan chop, which is several yards behind our backs, now a quietly unstable mass of thick, crusted ice.
When ready, Spence rocks up onto his snowboard. Itâs as if heâs taken his foot off of an imaginary brake pedal. The wind propels him toward the slopping dune. I chase after him on my cross-country skis, but Iâm no match. I watch him immediately shrink to the size of an ant, just like the sledders who are picking their slopes around him at Warren Dunes State Park in Sawyer.
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If one major travel trend has emerged over the tumultuous months of the pandemic, it’s been the public’s enormous appetite for getting outdoors.
It’s good timing, then, that in December lawmakers added a new unit to the national park system. Buried under legislation for a federal omnibus spending bill was a law naming New River Gorge National Park and Preserve as the country’s 63rd national park.
Spreading across more than 72,000 acres of wooded hills, deep ravines, and Appalachian plateau in rural West Virginia, New River Gorge offers sweeping views of centuries-old oak and maple forest that stretch for miles along steep sandstone cliffs. Along with its stunning topography, its vast array of socially distanced outdoor activities rafting, rock climbing, hiking, mountain biking make it a pandemic-era destination par excellence.
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