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A Change of Pace (Sorta)

For the last 10 days, I’ve focused on snow, dogs, more snow, dogs, more snow, the food we eat in the snow, dogs,  snow, critters the dogs chase in the snow, etc. It’s gotten a bit, um, repetitive.

But not today. Today I actually get to focus on people. People that came to visit Hubby and I today. Wanna know who?

Amy and the Grandkids

Amy and her kids. I didn’t have a lot of time to spend with them, since I don’t get snow days, but I did manage to get a few good pictures.

Joey

Um, most of the pics are of the kids playing in the SNOW. Sorry. That’s why this is only sort of a change of pace.

Walking the Doggie Trails

There’s quite a network of dog trails in our backyard. The bigger kids didn’t have too much trouble navigating.

Joey Trying to Walk the Doggie Trails

Remember, we’ve had 45 inches of snow. I don’t know how tall Joey is, but he’s nowhere near that tall. The little guy was struggling.

Brianna and Gaige

I was leading the kids through the network of doggie trails. We were at the other end of the yard when Joey said, “G. My go inside.” He was tired of struggling through the white stuff. So tired, that he decided to go off trail for a short-cut. Big mistake. The trails are compacted and relatively easy to walk on. Joey isn’t very heavy, so he didn’t sink too much. Until he laid on his belly and slid off the wall into virgin snow.

As you will see in the following image, he got stuck.

Joey Stuck in the Snow

I had to doctor the image a bit. Joey was not too happy about being stuck in the snow and he was panicking, so I didn’t have time for adjustments and my image was severely overexposed. After a couple of tugs on his arm, I did manage to pull him out. Unfortunately, one of his boots was left behind so Amy had to come to the rescue.

Brianna

Joey was perfectly happy to go back into the house with Pop.

Hubby (aka "Pop") and Joey

To see the rest of the shots, you’ll have to visit my Flickr page. Sorry, but it would take an eternity to post all of them here.

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A Significant Event

I woke up this morning, all excited, thinking I was going to see at least a foot of new snow.

I was disappointed. There was only about five inches of fresh white stuff, judging by what was on top of the poo can.

Things are changing, however. The storm is now officially a blizzard. My office actually closed. That doesn’t mean I get a snow day, which really sucks. But I will enjoy the snow nevertheless. It’s really picked up. I’ll have snow pics to share later. For now, you’ll just have to enjoy some new Meg images.

I like chocolate chip muffins.

She’s our chocaholic dog. This image of Meg just beyond my chocolate chip muffin shows her classic, “You’re going to give me some of that, right?” look.

Dogs may not speak, but they all have unique sign language and other ways of communicating. Meg has always been a growler. She doesn’t growl to say “I am going to eat you.” She growls when she is playing and when she is frustrated.

This video is a good example of both. Because Belle is so much faster than Meg, when the two are playing, Meg is easily frustrated.

Don’t let the growling and barking scare you. It does not mean she is going to attack. That’s just how Meg communicates.

Check back later for a blizzard update!

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My Birthday Blizzard

According to my parents, I was born during a blizzard. I tried to find snow totals for that storm on the Internet, to no avail. I’ll just have to trust them. Since they’ve told me the story at least 40 times, and I’ve heard them tell others just as many times, it must be true. Right?

The Predictions, courtesy of Julia Smith

Before the storm arrived, well in advance, the weather guys said it was going to be a big one. As you can see from the map on the left, we were in the “totally screwed” region. We were supposed to get 20 to 30 inches. I was so excited. I love snow. I really wanted 30 inches. Really.

The dogs love playing in the snow, too. But keep in mind, Meg’s back is 21″ high. She’s our tallest dog. Belle’s back is 18″ high. And she’s got short legs. K has longer legs, but the top of her back is still only about 20 inches off of the ground.

I could not wait to see how the dogs reacted to that much snow. I told Hubby to make sure I was awake first thing in the morning before her let the dogs out. I wanted to get it on video. I did.

Throughout the course of the day, I got lots of other pics and video, too. I’ll have to share more of them later. Between playing in the snow, cooking and eating, I just did not have time yesterday. And now I need to go and shovel some snow. I’ll do a longer post later.

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More Snow

It snowed on us again last night. Yep, another 6 inches (15 cm) of snow. On top of the 6 inches we got this past Saturday. And this coming Saturday, which is just a few days away, we might get more.

Yummy smiling chocolate chip fudge muffin cupcake

In case you are wondering about the picture, it is completely unrelated to this post. But I like it. It makes me smile. It comes from the Flickr Faces In Places Group, which I cannot give you a link to because you need to be a group member to view the images. But I can link you to the Faces In Places blog, which you really should check out when you have a minute. It is nothing but pictures of things that look like faces. Like the cupcake/muffin shown above.

Back to the snow…

I like snow for many reasons. One of which is that it can make for some pretty interesting pictures. I have added shutter speed (Tv), aperture value (Av) and ISO data to the title of each image for those of you who are interested.

Tv: 1/8 Av: 2.8 ISO: 800

I have no idea why the sky looks red, but I think it looks cool.

Tv: 0.5 Av: 2.8 ISO: 400

The Av and ISO settings let enough light in to make this shot possible without flash. The Tv setting is what makes the falling snowflakes look like scratches on the picture. I did nothing as far as post processing aside from adjusting the contrast and brightness slightly so you could see the snowflake trails.

Tv: 1/8 Av: 2.8 ISO: 1600

I did nothing as far as post processing aside from adjusting the contrast and brightness slightly so you could see the snowflake trails.

Tv: 1/4 Av: 2.8 ISO: 800

Tv: 1/8 Av: 2.8 ISO: 1600

I hope to get outside later today to get some new doggie snow pics. But work has been a bit crazy this week, so we’ll have to wait and see…

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Our Ski Adventure

As mentioned here on Tuesday, Eric and I went skiing yesterday. The trip was a success, even if things did not go exactly as planned.

Here’s what was planned… drive to the WV place on Tuesday night. It’s about an hour from Wisp. We would leave there early on Wednesday to ski, spend the night at the WV place on Wednesday, then drive home this morning (Thursday).

Eric got off work late on Tuesday, so we didn’t leave my house until 11:00 PM. It’s a three-hour drive to the WV place. So we should have arrived at about 2:00 AM. I say should have because we hit a bit of trouble. Nothing horrible, but we were definitely delayed.

Before I tell you what happened, you need a bit of background. The WV place is not far east of Wisp. It’s more in the foothills than the mountains, so it’s not subject to the extreme mountain weather that hits the mountains not far west of the cabin. We haven’t been to the WV place since Thanksgiving. They were hit with the same blizzard as us in December. But that was like three weeks ago, so we figured the snow would be gone.

We were wrong.

Hubby wisely convinced me to take our big, bad four-wheel-drive truck instead of my car (wimpy little sedan).

Unfortunately, not even the big, bad 4wd truck was a match for the foot of compacted icy snow on Turkey Hollow Road.

We got stuck. A mere 100 yards down Turkey Hollow Road. We were only about 1/4 mile from the house at that point, but…

It was 2:00 AM. It was dark. It was COLD.

It didn’t take long for us to realize the truck was not moving an inch in either direction, so we grabbed our essentials and walked the rest of the way. Lucky for us there were flashlights in the truck!

I did mention that it was cold, right? About 20 degrees. The heat at the cabin stays set at 50 degrees when we are not there. It felt absolutely balmy at first. Because it would have taken hours for the radiant heat system to kick in, we just slept in the back bedrooms, which each have their own baseboard heating systems. It was 40 degrees back there. By the time we went to bed at about 3:30, it had warmed up to 45 degrees. Eric had an electric blanket and I had lots of layers, so we were okay.

I seriously had no idea there would be that much snow left at the WV place. Here are some pictures I shot on Wednesday morning…

Our (undrivable) driveway.

The house surrounded by snow.

Another shot of the driveway from just outside of the garage.

The big hill on Turkey Hollow Road, heading back toward where the truck was stuck. Notice all the critter tracks? It’s a mix of deer, turkey and people tracks (Eric and me).

Looking down Turkey Hollow Road toward our driveway.

Eric with shovel and rake in hand. Those were all the tools we had to work with to free the truck.

More people tracks, me and Eric, going and coming, taken from right in front of the truck looking down Turkey Hollow Road.

That’s Romney in the distance.

Just after we crossed the Potomac River back into Maryland, south of La Vale. Notice the pretty blue skies? It did not last long.

Not far west of La Vale on I-68.

The highway exit ramp from I-68 onto US-219 at Keyser’s Ridge.

Eric (dude in center) adjusting his boot.

Here I am. I felt like a mummy. I was warm, but being so bundled up made it hard to take pictures, which is why there aren’t many action shots. Plus, it snowed all day. They’d gotten 5 to 8 inches of snow the previous day and were predicting another 4 to 8 inches yesterday. The snow was awesome. The wind was bitter.

Skiing in powder was quite a treat, once we got used to it. It’s a bit different than skiing on packed snow.

The ride home was quite scenic with all of the snow stuck to the trees. (The farther east we traveled, the less snowy it was.)

All in all, we had a good time. Aside from the 30-40 minutes required to free the truck, that is.

We will definitely try to do it again. Wisp has a special on Wednesdays where you can ski for $21 all day, 9 am to 9 pm. The same lift ticket costs $39 per person any other non-holiday weekday and $59 per person on weekends and holidays. It was quite a deal. And there were NO lift lines. None.

Hopefully it will be a little bit warmer next time.

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Better Bird Pictures

Can you believe it? I had nothing better to do yesterday, so I went back to Conowingo and captured this picture.

Don’t believe it? Good. ‘Cause I am pulling your leg. This is a Bald Eagle in captivity, taken when Hubby and I visited the Alaska Raptor Center during our visit to Sitka, Alaska in 2008. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, unless you have a big, expensive camera lens or are very close to a bird, it’s hard to get good bird pictures. Here are a couple of their other captive birds.

This is a Peregrine Falcon.

And this is a Golden Eagle.

Don’t be sad that these birds are captive. They are only being held here because they couldn’t survive in the wild. The Alaska Raptor Center rehabilitates birds.

I didn’t explain in yesterday’s post why I went to Conowingo. I mean, I’ve lived in this area for 42 1/2 years and never knew eagles congregate at the dam during the winter. It just so happens that I read about it on a Flickr “friend’s” blog. I don’t know the guy really. I just like looking at his pictures, because he takes really good ones. His name is Jon, aka Nikographer, and I was introduced to his work by another Flickr “friend” — Alaska Dave — in Soldotna, Alaska. I met AKDave when researching our Alaska trip. Dave introduced me to Jon, which is sort of funny since Jon lives in Northern VA. Small world…

So, back to the why. It was through Nikographer Jon that I learned about the eagles at Conowingo. I also learned about a cool place called the Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge (BHNWR), in Smyrna, Delaware, through Jon. If you didn’t click on the BHNWR link, you missed some amazing Red Fox pictures. He is also the reason I went to Wheaton Regional Park where I captured a nice great blue heron photo.

I’ve mentioned all of this before, but in case you don’t remember, I had to explain again. If you missed my last discussion about these guys, you also missed a very cool Snow Geese video.

If all goes as planned, I may actually get to visit BHNWR on Friday. I’ll sort of be in the area since I’m doing a 5k on Saturday in Ocean City, MD. The plan is to detour through Smyrna on the way. Maybe I’ll get some good bird pics there. If not, that’s okay. Again, I really just want to see the Snow Geese. There’s just something magical about seeing the skies and fields full of Snow Geese and Canada Geese, not to mention hearing nothing but a cacophony of honking.

It’s a bit early in the year, so I might be disappointed. I’m hoping to get lucky though. Keep your fingers crossed for me.