Free as a bird,
it’s the next best thing to be.
Free as a bird.
– beatles

It’s almost New Year’s Day again.  That means it’s time for the annual Fog Bowl at Lake Columbia in Portage, Wisconsin.  The fog bowl is the day when ice locked kayakers around Wisconsin finally crack and  decide to take  any open water they can get.  This is it. Lake Columbia is actually a large cooling pond for the big Columbia coal fired power plant that serves much of the area.  The horseshoe shaped pond is about a mile long and about half as wide.  Water exits the plant on one side at nearly 90f and cools as it flows around the “U” to the intake on the other side.  Continue reading →