At "Shiver on the River" today, the Coast Guard gave a demonstration worthy of the Indy 500 with its ice boat, throwing blizzards of snow hundreds of feet in its wake. (more on the air boat at the end of this post)

There were several groups of skiers on the island.

The sudden snow squall might have kept a few people from heading to the island, but it was such a pretty whiteout....

...unless you are very short, like the fluffy one, and you are a bedraggled, snowy hot mess, tired of defying gravity, bounding blindly through ear-deep drifts, and you finally refuse to get out of the car, preferring to watch Smart, who is never tired, from the driver's seat.

I was quite enthralled with the Coast Guard demo and the air boat, so I dug up a little more info..... Here's a video of a sister boat in action:

Here's a link to some information about air boats and their use in ice rescue, and here's a link to the official Coast Guard Station Belle Isle page.