Another Groundhog Day has come and gone. This year, for the first time, ever, we attend a non-Wiarton Groundhog Day party. Ironically, a visit to Wiarton in the summer is quite rare, this year, I travelled there 3 times, one of which is chronicled in the summer’s blog posts.

Punxsutawney Phil predicts an early Spring, Wiarton Willie predicts 6 more weeks of winter. More on this later but we are going with Willie.

There is bad news this year, the GroundhogDayRoundup site has gone inactive, click here to see what it looked like last year. This is almost as distressing as the loss of WiartonWillieCam a couple of years ago.

In other distressing news, Winnipeg Willow passed away just ahead of Groundhog Day forcing cancellation of the festival. I’ll keep an eye on Winnipeg Willow for next year, remember that the major players in Canada, are Shubenacadie Sam, Balzac Billy and Wiarton Willie.

Once again, in a Groundhog Day tradition, hi to Star and April who travel to a different Groundhog Day celebration every year. This year, they looked in on the Dover Doug celebration in Dover, PA. Check out their blog here.

The Punxsutawney Phil festival is the largest of all and 20000 were expected this year. The party starts at 3am, but we figured we would take our chances with a 5am arrival since we were driving up from Unionville PA which is 2 hours away. Turns out that this was a good strategy, Gobblers’ Knob is very well situated for large numbers and most of the best spots are taken up by dignitaries anyway. The grounds are quite carefully prepared and there is a bonfire which we kept away from as it created something of a mud pit to traverse.

Gobblers’ Knob is actually in the suburbs of Punxsutawney, you cannot drive there on Groundhog Day, you park at one of three staging areas and are shuttled up in school buses. The service is quite well organized, chatting with the drivers’ is a real unexpected highlight of the trip. You must be on a bus to Gobblers’ Knob by 6:30am after which the bus service is suspended until after the reveal which at this latitude is around 7:15am.

It was a beautiful perfectly clear night; by Wiarton standards, quite warm at -4C. The show was very well organized, excellently paced. I particularly like that 2 of the Inner Circle (Punxsutawney’s answer to Wiarton’s Shadow Cabinet) were hosting the show; they were clearly chosen for their talent and energy. The fireworks were awesome, possibly the best we have ever seen.

Of course the reveal takes place after sun up and the perfectly clear night became a perfectly clear and sunny day which is why we were quite surprised that Phil did not see his shadow. We are conflicted when Willie and Phil don’t agree; as the crow flies, we are the exact same distance from either Wiarton or Punxsutawney. To break the tie, we rely on Fenwick Flossie who predicted 6 more weeks of winter.

We loved Punxsutawney: It was volunteers who carefully covered Gobblers’ Knob in hay in case the ground became boggy; volunteers carefully cleaned and groomed every school bus; a member of the Inner Circle is available throughout the night for photos, volunteers staff refreshment stands. Chatting with the bus driver on the way to our car, he expressed genuine regret that we couldn’t stay in town for the Rest of the day. Once a year on February 2, through the effort of the entire town, Punxsutawney is at the centre of the world.

Click here to restart the blog series
Click here for the photos.