“The fog is so thick that you can’t even spy the land,” – Bob Dylan

It was chilly and cold.

I jumped in my Jeep and headed west, not sure what I’d find.

As it turned out, I never would have expected the things I experienced.

Hitting the highway, the mist got thicker the farther I went.

The significant amount of snow still piled high in the area, coupled with temperatures above freezing and the continued dampness from the overnight rain, helped to make the foggy scene look ominous.

Cars with headlights on, some with them off. Some vehicles moved slower than normal, others moved way too fast for the conditions.

I had hoped to check out the countryside, to see what was happening with the rivers and streams and see the amount of snow that had melted, but everything was enveloped in this thick London-style fog.

Things stayed this way for a good 40 miles or so. Fortunately, my familiarity with the route and its roadside features helped me keep track of where I was.

I drove past summertime destinations thinking how in those warm and delicious days in my memories these places could ever have looked like they did on this day – it was almost unimaginable.

The railroad tracks had disappeared, along with roadside bars, gas stations and places to eat. I was nervous about vehicles pulling out slowly onto the highway in front of me. Got to be alert.

I was also concerned about deer, moose or other wildlife emerging from the mist at the last second, standing in the road, giving me only a couple of heartbeats and a breath to react.

I kept my dim lights on. My eyes scanned the yellow line and the white fog strip along the road edge to keep me centered. My situational awareness was sharp.

Oncoming vehicles appeared like ghostly transports taking shape out of the gray-white mists. They only became partially visible before they were already gone.

After I climbed up the big hill, just past the little creek at the bottom, I began to see the fog dissipating on the downhill slope.

In another five miles, the fog had lifted completely.

I was encouraged by this. Even though I had hoped the fog would only be a temporary inconvenience, I had no assurance of that.

In retrospect, I would liken the change once the fog was gone to that part in “The Wizard of Oz” when the movie goes from black-and-white to color.

I drove into an entirely different scene, one with far more bare ground. The snow cover had a patchy appearance, and the creeks and streams were running as fast and wild as a kicking pony.

I felt like the road had climbed to a high place in the sky, where I was driving along a plateau or a mesa, closer to the sun, with all the rest of everything far below me.

There were numerous groups of deer standing in these open and bare-ground areas, with their heads down to the ground, feeding on shoots of new green grass. Along with them, there were hundreds of gulls looking for bugs to eat in the farm fields.

There was still plenty of snow in the woodlands situated on the hills and bluffs and tucked into the river valleys, but this was comparatively like driving out of the tumbleweed deserts of the west into the Midwestern farm belt.

I kept driving. The farther west, the better.

The temperature, which had been around 45 degrees back at home, had climbed into the mid-60s. I started to notice people along the roadsides out walking. There were lawns that had mostly green grass on them.

Of course, the trees, the ground cover in the woods and the brush were still wearing their bedraggled shades of paper bag brown and shriveled gray.

I crossed another couple of county lines and the flooded creeks and streams, with their bottoms and banks made of clay, had turned brown.

Along one stretch of highway, I crossed maybe a dozen rivers or creeks, all this same color, dumping themselves into Lake Superior. The shoreline was still armored with tremendous snowbanks that these tributaries had carved their way into.

I pulled my vehicle over to get out. I was not far from one of the river bridges and I could immediately hear the water rolling. I shut the car door.

Like the beauty of the blooming poppies, brightly colored Munchkinland and the yellow brick road, I found myself in a wonderland.

I immediately saw or heard a handful of spring birds, including flickers, song sparrows and eastern phoebes that I had not experienced yet at home.

The blacktop road here was pockmarked with potholes and places where the asphalt had cracked, been filled and then cracked again – proof to me of warmer and colder times.

I walked down the centerline, kicking the mud off my boots from the shoulder of the road where there was puddled water.

At the bridge, I leaned over the old concrete rail. This was one of the widest rivers in this part of the region. It was able to keep the rising water within its banks.

The brown-colored river was full of table-sized ice chunks floating intermittently downstream. Most surprising were the dozens of not only big branches, but massive trunks from large trees that floated past me under the bridge.

Some of the small ones were the size of a man-cave couch, while the biggest may have been almost as long as a city bus.

I’ve never seen anything like that.

From the bridge, I could see the river mouth, flanked with those big icebergs, but with a channel gouged out of them that opened into the big lake.

Way out there, on the open water, the tree trunks converged to form an odd collection of what looked like a broken animal cracker menagerie floating on chocolate milk.

A sign on a motel message board read “Spring has sprung.”

I had to concede that I guess it truly had – at least here.

On the way home, I grabbed a warm chicken-bacon-swiss sandwich at a gas station that was easily the worst I have ever had. With the help of a cold Dr Pepper, I choked what I had eaten down.

I stopped to take some pictures at a river shrouded in that same icy fog I’d seen earlier in the day. There was a waterfall here too. It was blasting water downstream, running clear.

I saw twice as many deer along the road going home. There were also several feeding along the road shoulders. Wild turkeys were too.

I glanced to catch a deer standing not far outside my driver’s side window and I did a double take. The deer did the same thing when it saw me. That made me laugh.

There was a big bald eagle, and a couple of turkey vultures, lifting themselves into the air from dead deer carcass at the side of the road.

In a tree overlooking the highway, I saw a dark-phase rough-legged hawk. We both made eye contact too. No double takes.

Sooner than I had expected, I drifted out of the Land of Oz and into the thick fog once more. It was even thicker this time than it had been earlier.

This added time to the ride home, without much of anything to see.

Through the mist I recognized “Da Tree Lakes,” the junkyard and an upcoming passing lane. This is where I was finally able to pass two slow-moving conveyances which I believe were a stagecoach and a rickshaw.

The outside temperature had slid back down into the 40s once I hit the fog.

By the time I was almost home, the fog was so thick I could hardly see where to make my turn.

Strangely, given some of the day, it had turned out to be a memorable outing, one that revealed an emphasis for me I hadn’t expected.

I remembered one of the lessons from “The Wizard of Oz,” the one Dorothy states at the end: “If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard. Because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with.”

This little trip showed me that instead of sticking around my own backyard, in the fog, the snow and the cold, I left for an adventure and found my heart’s desire in a Land of Oz I never would have found in my own backyard.

I even saw a rickshaw.

Outdoors North is a weekly column produced by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources on a wide range of topics important to those who enjoy and appreciate Michigan’s world-class natural resources of the Upper Peninsula.