Being a Floridian at heart, if not by birth, I can honestly say I have never been in weather as cold as last weekend in Ely, Minnesota when I had the opportunity to attend Ely’s Winter Festival and visit with the community’s favorite son, arctic exporer Will Steger.

Fortunately I did dress for the part, but I still had to wear fairly thin gloves to take pictures and there was one point that my hands went numb and it took 15 minutes of warming over a pot-bellied stove to get them to stop hurting.

It is a little difficult to operate a camera in sub-zero temperatures. Each of my two digital cameras froze up once on me during the picture taking at the Steger homestead.

The official low Saturday night was 32 below zero, but it had warmed up to a balmy 25 below when we left Ely on Sunday morning to catch a plane out of Duluth.

It was a beautiful place and an interesting experience. Maybe I can go back there in the summertime!