I have lived in this state for most of my life and I'm still not friends with winter. I can appreciate the season: gorgeous white snowdrifts, the beauties of ice, the delight in tracking animal prints in the snow, etc... The season is full of riches but just today, I'm longing to lounge on a beach, outside, up north. Without suffering from hypothermia.

Here is the next best thing, a postcard from Trout Lake.

It's my favorite video postcard from all my many years on the road. Those kids are having SO much fun.

Wish you were here?

Wish I was there.

Have you ever used the 511 highway travel alert system? My family and I traveled by car to Colorado this holiday break. On our return trip, we were in the thick of the blizzard conditions that gripped our through travel states like Nebraska and Iowa. Interstate 80 was closed in several spots, so as we tried to navigate our way, we dialed 511 constantly. Each state operates this system and it is updated with road closures, traffic incidents and weather conditions as often as a couple times an hour. It is a very useful service that's also available on the web. I will say that it was so heavily utilized when we were dialing it was often busy. It also had the glitch of bouncing you to another state's road conditions if your route was close to a state line. All in all though, it sure beats knowing the road ahead is closed before finding yourself at a road closed barrier without notice.

Over the summer videographer Wendy Woodard and I traveled to the very tip of Door County. After a bit of island hopping and two ferry boat rides we made it to our final destination... Rock Island.

This week we are putting the finishing touches on 2 reports that will air after the New Year on In Wisconsin. Time and time again we heard visitors, park rangers, lighthouse tour guides utter the phrase this is one of "Wisconsin's Best Kept Secrets". Rock Island State Park is one of those out of the way places. You don't end up there by chance. You really have to "want" to get there.

The reports we are working on will show you the raw natural beauty, the historic side of this remote island and the cultural significance left behind by those that once called this Rock Island home. You decide if it's a secret worth sharing.

These short blog posts are designed to let the viewers of In Wisconsin keep track of what goes on behind the scenes and learn about what we do to create the stories that appear on the broadcast. Well, this week I really didn't do much of anything. That's because I was on vacation. My week away was spent camping along the southern shore of one of the greatest lakes in the world, Lake Superior. It was a good reminder of the beauty and power of this magnificent lake. One day it was calm and the next there were big rollers crashing on the shore.

I was very encouraged by another observation on my vacation. This summer I've been reporting on initiatives to reconnect kids with nature. Both of the state parks we visited had plenty of families taking advantage of the fall colors and one of them even offered a wildly popular treasure hunt. What a great idea to create fun outdoor memories for kids.

Last week I was on a vacation of the "stay-cation" variety. In addition to mulling over the culinary opportunities to be gleaned from the Mt. Everest of ripe tomatoes in my garden, (I'm thinking salsa for seven thousand, could you bring the chips?), I've also had the chance to make a dent in the Mt. Everest of magazines and newspaper articles that I've accumulated in the "to be read" pile. It's now down to "K-2" dimensions. I read a few articles about the water woes facing our world.

My blog thoughts for today? Man, are we lucky to live in such a watery state: two Great Lakes, the Mississippi River, 15,000 lakes, and ten of thousands of miles of rivers and streams. Whew! A few years ago IN WISCONSIN produced a series of reports on the Great Lakes. Give it a look.

And if you've got any "Salsa for 7000" recipes, send them along!

I've been enjoying the opportunity to learn more about native prairie plants this summer while shooting stories both Curtis Prairie in the University Arboretum and, more recently, at the city of Madison's Cherokee Marsh. In a rather pleasurable instance of work following me on vacation, I had a chance to hike in a prairie restoration near Wildcat Mountain State Park last weekend. Just when I thought I was getting pretty good at identifying native plants I came across a striking purple flower standing tall in a sea of yellow golden rod. I couldn't rest until I discovered its name. I took a photo and sent it by e-mail to Russ Hefty who manages Madison's conservation parks. He came back with a reply almost instantly. It's called ironweed, vernonia fasciculate, and normally grows in wet soil. Perhaps that's why there was only one lonely sentinel standing in that field.

I was just in Boston this week visiting in-laws and it seemed like a good place to see "Julie and Julia," the biopic of Julia Child and the blogger, Julie Powell, who set out to make every one of the 584 recipes from "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in one year. Needless to say, Julia Child's story, as portrayed by Meryl Streep, was much more compelling. But I had hoped to see her early days in television. There was a little bit, but only in the "Julie" story when she and her husband watch old clips. And they watch the old Dan Ackroyd impression of Julia Child from Saturday Night Live in the seventies. I was hoping for behind the scenes footage of Julia's first days at the WGBH studios. But the story culminates with the publication of Child's groundbreaking cookbook.

I did however get some inside scoop from an old family friend who was there at 'GBH in those first days of Julia Child's TV career. "The crew was scared every time she came in, she had no idea what she was doing." I found that reassuring.