Look out for potholes!

Our 4-H ski club was well-attended yesterday and it got a little tricky on the Mountain Division Trail with the snowmobilers. There were a lot of machines on the trail and our large group of kids didn't really want to ski in a single file on the side of the trail the entire afternoon.

So we ventured over to the less-traveled paths around Otter Pond and the kids really enjoyed the hill leading to the pond.

It's all about the thrill of speeding down a hill for the kids, not to mention it takes a lot less effort.

But after skiing on the pond for a while we spotted a couple of ice fishing holes that were freshly drilled. And then we saw more ... and more of them; there were at least a couple of dozen scattered all over the place.

My concern wasn't that the kids would fall through the ice - it was clearly solid - but that one of them might catch a ski tip in one of the holes and lose a ski or take a hard fall (the holes were kind of hard to spot until you were right next to them). We moved off the pond and headed back to the main trail to play it safe.

Those kids who weren't grossed-out by the dead fish wanted to know why the fisherman didn't take them home. It seemed a mystery.

We also stopped by the boat launch on Sebago Lake to see what was happening over there. The kids and I love to check-in with the winter ice fishing village that pops up on the frozen lake every year.

We even got to see an ice drill in action yesterday. Boy those things are loud.