Winter Wonderland
Water-Winter Wonderland was the Michigan slogan forty years ago.

Water Wonderland appeared on Michigan license plates beginning in 1954. It took ten years for the folks in charge of attracting tourists to realize that for three Michigan seasons out of four, no tourist cared about coming to a cold Water Wonderland.

The slogan got changed to Water-Winter Wonderland in 1965.

1967 was the last year Water-Winter Wonderland appeared on Michigan plates. In 1968 the plates proclaimed the new state slogan, Great Lake State.

I had to Google to refresh my memory on all this when the phrase "Winter Wonderland" popped into my mind while looking at the pictures I took on Wednesday.

On the busiest travel day of the year, the snow came down. And it wasn't just a nice little dusting. It was wet, heavy, slippery, and nasty.

I was cozy and warm in the house watching winter arrive and cooking for Thanksgiving. My only concern was the power. The snow was so wet and heavy that branches were breaking off trees. All our powerlines are above ground and many links we depend on go through wooded areas.

Fortunately the power stayed on. Unfortunately this beautiful pine tree in the front yarn ended up losing several large branches in the evening, after the picture was taken.

This is how it looked out the front window about three o'clock in the afternoon. Before it finished snowing Wednesday evening, we had six inches of snow in our Southwest Michigan Wonderland.