Merry Christmas from The Everyday Adventurer!

Well, hello there, friends! It's been far too long since I've come around to share a story or two from my wanderings through the trails. Life has its funny little twists, doesn't it? One day you're striding happily down a quiet forest path, and the next you're swept up in the busyness of everyday life. But on this Christmas Day, I couldn't let the moment pass without stopping in to say a warm and heartfelt Merry Christmas to you all!

Christmas, to me, always brings to mind the kind of peace you find out on the trail. It's the stillness of freshly fallen snow on the trees, the quiet whisper of the wind carrying some distant mystery, and the soft crunch of footsteps marking the way. Out there, everything feels just right—like the world itself is offering you a quiet little gift. And maybe that's what this day is all about: stepping back, taking a deep breath, and remembering the simple beauty of the world around us.

If I close my eyes, I can almost hear it now—a tiny chickadee calling out from a snow-dusted branch, a squirrel rustling through its winter stash, and the faint crackle of ice as the creek freezes over. It's nature's Christmas carol, and if you listen closely enough, it's singing for you, too.

Wherever you are today, I hope you're surrounded by warmth, joy, and perhaps a little bit of that trail magic we all love so much. Maybe there's a hike waiting for you tomorrow, a new adventure just beyond the horizon. Or maybe you're simply content to sit back, sip some hot cocoa, and let the day wrap around you like a cozy old quilt. Either way, this season is a perfect reminder that sometimes the simplest moments are the ones that matter most.

Thank you for walking this path with me, dear readers. Your presence has been one of the most unexpected and treasured joys of this little blogging journey of mine. I'm looking forward to sharing more trails and tales in the new year. For now, I'll leave you with this:

May your Christmas be as peaceful as a quiet forest, as joyful as a bubbling stream, and as warm as a campfire under the stars.

Merry Christmas, my friends, and here's to many adventures yet to come!

I'll talk to you later, Ratty

Merry Christmas Everyone! 2019

Here's a special Christmas present from me to you. This picture is for all of you who have decided to visit me on Christmas Eve, even though I haven't posted nearly enough this year. I share this same picture for most years, but the post is a little new. I encountered this scene several years ago. I really did take the picture. It was at a place called Carpenter Lake.

Click on the picture to make it bigger for the best effect. Take a close look at Santa's reindeer. There's something very strange about them. Santa is a little different than normal too, but I'll never tell how.

Maybe Santa will think of using turkeys or bison one of these upcoming years, but he still likes the squirrels. I wonder what happened to those reindeer. Maybe these guys are for alternate days. You will probably have trouble seeing it, but the lead squirrel has a red nose.

I keep promising to post more often, and one of these days I'll surprise you. I'm still getting my hiking skills back so maybe 2020 will be my year. Until then it's time to take a little break and to say...

Merry Christmas, everyone!

A Fun Day In The Cornfields

I went out to try to get a bit of new material to put up here, but you know what I found? Cornfields.

Cornfields as far as the eye can see.

I think I just went in the wrong direction this time. But this is the results.

Hey, cornfields are pretty good for what they are, but you gotta admit they aren't very exciting most of the time, especially in the middle of winter when they've already been harvested.

I ended up in this small town looking at their little park. A park like this looks kind of bad in the winter time.

In the summer it's a green happy place with kids playing and having fun, but there's no green and no fun here today.

So I went back to explore the cornfields.

Yup, still the same. I thought it might change after fifteen minutes, but there was no change to the cornfields. They're still barren, and still cold and snowy.

I guess the giant hills in the back are interesting. But they're so far away.

Do you feel depressed yet?

... Wait a minute.

Okay, that's enough. This post was sad, but I'm pretty happy. And you might think I'm a little demented, but I think the post was a hilarious joke. You shouldn't write something if it's not fun for you, and this was fun.

But was it art? Maybe, maybe not. It was fast food for the mind. And now it's done. Was it even a little entertaining? I'll talk to you later.

Did You Think It Was Over?

Did you think winter was over? Maybe it is over where you are, but winter doesn't seem to want to let go here. These scenes in my pictures are from two days ago right in the middle of another big snowstorm.

I was just getting ready to do a few things around here, but the snow stops me from executing my evil plans. "Evil," you ask? Well, if you call cutting down a bunch of trees evil, then my plans are as evil as can be.

I also came within a day of calling them out to bring me a truck full of gravel to spread around the front of my property. Now I think I'll wait until I'm sure winter is over as much as it can be.

But there's good news! I think we will see the end of winter here in less than a week. The temperatures are getting ready to shoot up about twenty or thirty degrees in a few days. I don't think it will be able to snow anymore after that happens. We'll see if I'm right.

So while I'm waiting, I'm not really doing much nature stuff. I'm a little distracted anyway because my new business that I've mentioned in the past is going full swing right now. After months of setting things up, I've finally begun operations. This is the fun part.

Even though the snow is kind of beautiful to look at, when you read this the snow should be mostly melted. It didn't last long. It's still pretty cold though. And I did at least get a few trees cut down before the snow started.

But I have even better news. As soon as it warms up the very nearby river should be just about ready to flood. It's almost over the banks now, but as soon as they release a bit of water from the dam up north several towns here will be flooded. Mine sits a little too high for water to get in here, but the roads will be blocked by water almost all around. The back way will be clear though.

I'll try to get some pictures of the high water as soon as I can. I have a few bad pictures ready, but I'll see if I can get some better ones. Then I'll get some even better ones if it does flood. Don't miss it. It should be interesting. I'll talk to you later.

A Snowy New Adventure

I finally have some new pictures from a brand new everyday adventure. It was only a little difficult walking through the deep snow, and only because I'm not used to doing it. But I had such a great time.

When I got out there I remembered how much I love going to the nature parks. Some of them are still closed around here until spring, but they'll be opening up very soon. It's warming up fast, and I think the snow will not last much longer.

I also have the interesting experiment in photo editing for you that I've been doing lately. I decided to take these snowy photos and put them through the editor and see if I can improve them a bit. Let's see how I did.

The top photo is the one I changed a little with some small edits. The second one above is the unedited photo. I brought out the detail in the whole picture, especially the snow. Now you can see all of the footprints and other details in the snow. And I also brought out a lot of detail and some color in the trees and other vegetation.

I think overall the newer edited picture is easier to look at. I saw the detail while I was out there. Now you can see it too.

So, what do you think? Do you like the first or second picture more, and why?

I did the same exact thing here with these next two pictures. I saved my exact editing process from the first photo and used it on this one as well. So you can see the results in the picture above. The last picture is the unedited version.

You might be able to appreciate these last ones more after clicking on them to see the larger versions. I like the detail I made with this one, but I'm not sure about the deeper shadows. Maybe I should have turned those shadows down a bit. They look nice on the original full-size unbloggerized photos that I can't share though.

I won't torture you with the details of my photo edits every time. I just thought it might be interesting this time to do this with some new pictures. So enjoy this type of post while it's here. I may do it again when it's appropriate, but I'll go back to regular stuff next.

And I'm not quite ready for my incredible stunt that I hinted at in my last post. I thought about doing it on this last outing, but in the end, I decided to wait until some of the snow melts. I think that won't be much longer. I hope you'll like this stunt as well as I think I will. Maybe some of you will try to duplicate it once I do it. I hope so. I wish I could tell you what it is! Soon...

 I'll talk to you later.

This Is What A Blizzard Looks Like

It took me long enough to finally come back, but this day we had a huge blizzard was pretty much my only opportunity since my last post to get any pictures. After I thought the deep freeze was over it came right back. It wasn't quite as cold as before, but it was still too cold to go out.

So after several other unrelated misadventures, the weather finally began to improve. Just when I thought I'd head back out to a nature park for a nice winter hike, there was news that we had a terrible blizzard coming. That was the end of my plans.

So on the day of the blizzard, I decided to take a few pictures in spite of this big storm. I had to use my phone to take the pictures because my big camera isn't water resistant. The phone is. I made sure the flash was on so I could capture the falling snowflakes. I didn't anticipate what really happened.

The snow was coming down so much and the wind was blowing so hard that I couldn't see individual snowflakes, and neither could my camera. What you see in the pictures is exactly what I was seeing while I was out there. It wasn't good at all.

I had the wind at my back while I took the pictures, but I had to turn around to get back to the house. If things would have been even a little worse I could have gotten lost just this short distance from my house. Needless to say, I only took a few pictures before I went back inside.

It's now been a few days since this blizzard, but they're just now opening all of the official places, like schools and the nearby freeway, back up. It takes a lot to close down these places here in Iowa. The snow is too deep at the nature parks to go hiking so I'll have to think up something else for my next posts. Luckily it's not going to get very cold again, so maybe the snow will melt quickly. So that's my news for now. I'll talk to you later.

Night and Day

Problems problems. This new year is kicking off with a bang for me. We've been down in the deep freeze around here with record low temperatures. For several days the average temperatures were around -20 Fahrenheit (-29 Celsius). And right in the middle of it all, my computer's hard drive died.

Because of the deep freeze I haven't been able to go out and get any new nature pictures for a new post. So I've just been sitting here waiting for it to get above zero degrees so I can even pretend it's safe to go out for long periods.

And when my hard drive died it took a lot of my important stuff along with it. I had backups for some of it and some things are lost forever. Right now I can't do much of anything until the new hard drive I ordered gets here.

But now the temperatures are beginning to rise just above zero so I'll be able to go back out to my precious nature trails. And my hard drive should be arriving today sometime. So I'll be back up and running(walking) soon.

Until I get everything in order I thought you might enjoy a couple of these pictures I took of my front door window. As you might have guessed by now, this is clearly a frosted over window. I'm sure I didn't have to tell you that part.

The last time I took pictures like this was when I first moved here. They're not much, but they might be better than pictures of my fat old gassy dog. The dog pictures might be fine, but just feel lucky you don't have smellevision. Anyway, these are my super-fantastic pictures for today. I'll talk to you later.

A Squirrely Christmas Present For You

Here's a special Christmas present from me to you. This picture is for all of you who have decided to visit me on Christmas Eve. Click on the picture to make it bigger for the best effect. Take a close look at Santa's reindeer. There's something very strange about them.

I guess this is why Santa Claus was looking so closely at those squirrels Friday.

Merry Christmas everybody!

Tracking a Christmas Mystery

After finding all of those rabbit tracks in my last post I decided to find some tracks for animals that most people look for. I went to the back of the nature park to a meadow where I knew there would be some good tracks. This is where the deer live, and I knew I could find their tracks here.

All I had to do was go to the part of the meadow that's farthest away from the hiking trail. No humans go here so I knew the deer tracks would be here. It wasn't too hard to find the tracks when I got there. They were all over this part of the meadow.

The first thing I did was take plenty of pictures so I would have a record of the deer tracks. Then I took a very close look at the tracks to see if there were any fresh ones. How recently had these deer been here? There were some older tracks, but there were also some very new ones too.

I must have just missed a whole herd of deer by only a matter of minutes! I knew what I had to do. I was going to follow these fresh tracks to see if I could find the deer. As soon as I began following them I noticed something very strange. There were other tracks.

Somebody else had been over here even though I was the only human who ever really comes out to this part of the meadow. Whoever it was had very big feet and he was here about the same time as the deer.

I continued to follow the tracks and saw that they lead right into the forest. The big footprints went right in after them. I really didn't want to follow them on the same path so I went back to the hiking trail. I was going in the same general direction, but I figured my quest was over.

After I got into the forest I saw some movement far ahead to the right of the path. There looked to be over half a dozen deer purposely moving away from me through the forest. These were the ones that made the tracks I was looking for!

As they turned and cut through the forest in front of me, I excitedly tried to get a few pictures but they were very far away. I got a few bad pictures that showed deer, but it was very hard to see them through the trees. I thought I knew where they were headed but I would have to run to catch up.

I did my best to run through the forest without alerting the deer that I was there. I thought my chances of catching up with them weren't good, but I still had to try. I stayed on the hiking trail, and that may have been my downfall because I never did catch the deer.

When I realized that they were long gone I slowed to a walk and sadly began to make my way back to the front of the park so I could go home. And when I turned the corner to the path that leads to the parking lot I found something amazing!

There he was! The person that was standing in the meadow with the deer! I recognized him by the size of his feet. There's only one person who wears this kind of red suit that I know of, and there he was in front of me! He didn't see me because he was standing there peering through the trees at a black squirrel. I guess he had never seen a black squirrel before because he seemed to be fascinated by it.

I got this one picture right as he saw me standing there. After only a second after turning my way he just vanished as if he was never there! The only thing I was left with was this one picture and a bad Christmas story.

Tune in on Christmas Eve (Sunday) to find out why Santa Claus was really so interested in squirrels. I'll have a special Christmas present for any of you who can find the time to stop by for a visit!

Merry Christmas everybody!

Wabbit Twacks

Do you notice how busy the trail in this picture looks.Judging by all of those tracks, there must have been a lot of people walking through this busy nature park. Right?

Actually, that's not right. Take a closer look at these tracks. None of them are from humans. I was the only person to enter this park since it snowed. Every one of the tracks in this picture are from animals, mostly rabbits.

So, what does this tell us about this park?

First of all, there are a heck of a lot of rabbits running around in this place. I already know that part is true because I've gotten my best rabbit pictures from here. If you come here at the right time you can see literally dozens of rabbits running around. Seeing that many means there could be hundreds.

The second thing it tells us is not many people like to come out to a place like this when it is cold and snowy. Obvious? My point here is that I like this kind of weather and I love being in a place like this all alone. So this is the best time for me to get back to hiking again. It all makes me happy.

Without the people crowding this place, the animals can thrive here. That's good for the animals, for me, and for you because I'll share the pictures of them with you.

And it won't be just rabbits, even though most of these tracks are from them. I saw squirrel tracks too, which are similar to rabbit. There were some deer walking this trail. And I even saw tracks from at least one coyote.

But there were other kinds of tracks I found on my next trip here. Those tracks were a bit confusing. I eventually found the culprit. The creature that made them was different than any other I'd ever seen before. I'll reveal what I saw in my next post this Friday. I'll talk to you later.

Alice And The Frozen Dragons

I want to take you back some years to one of my more popular adventures with my old friend Alice who has now gone off to Wonderland to have exciting adventures of her own. I still hear from her now and then about some of the fun things she's doing now, but those are stories for her to tell.

What is it that Alice is staring at? While I was walking down the new walkway, I saw her looking at something off to the side of the railing. I wondered if she spotted a duck or something walking around down there.

She seemed pretty interested in what it was because when I asked her she didn't seem to hear me for a second. I asked her again and she said to come and take a look. I wasn't sure what I would find because she has a habit of dragging parts of Wonderland along with her on our trips.

As I got closer, I noticed something big and dark down there. It wasn't moving so I knew I needed to find out what was going on. We had not seen any animals out here yet, so I didn't think it was anything that might be alive.

When I got there all I saw were these broken tree branches that were half submerged in the ice of the lake. For some reason they looked strangely familiar though. I couldn't figure it out, and I didn't know why Alice was so interested in them.

She said that winter is a bad time for them. I asked her what she was talking about. She said that some of the dragons didn't like the cold, and they easily froze to death unless they found shelter. I told her that it was only a piece of wood.

She said that wood was what dragons turned into when they died. She said that this one must have been swimming around in the lake when it froze. Now it is stuck there forever, but none of the rest of us know that this wood used to be a dragon.

Here's another poor unfortunate dragon that peaked up out of it's den at the wrong time. Alice spotted this one right away too. She walked over to check on it, and said that it was now turned into wood too.

I asked her if she knew why they turned into wood. She looked at me as if I were stupid and said, "Because they're dead." I thought right then that I should go get the Red Queen after her. That would teach her a lesson.

Instead, I asked again, why is it wood that they turn into when they die? Then she finally explained that it was because they dried out and became petrified. That was also the reason why we never find any dead dragons lying around.

I guess that answered that question. Now we all know what happens to dragons when they die, right from the thoughts of Alice. I wonder if she'll see any other interesting creatures on our next trip together.

Even Cooler Than Last Time

I've not been quite as quick to post this one as I'd hoped, but here it finally is. Anyway, last time I said I'd try to get some cooler pictures for this next post. And here they are! You can't get much cooler than snow, snow, and more snow. You're looking at about ten inches of the white stuff in these pictures.

Just before this snowstorm I was thinking about how lucky I was that we haven't had much snow around here yet. There were some bricks out at the back of my property that I had been planning on collecting for a little project. But that's all going to have to wait now until the snow melts. The waiting is the hardest part.

So now I'm going to have to figure out what I'm going to do until then. Snow just doesn't melt overnight you know. I considered fishing around in the snow for those bricks, but I don't think that's really going to work well. I guess I'll just have to do something else.

The dog really likes playing in the snow. I could stand out there throwing snowballs at her. That's actually one of her favorite games. I'd post the pictures of that, but I already did that my first year here.

My dog used to really enjoy being in front of the camera. I'd point it at her and she'd come running. Now she makes a point of looking away. It's as if she knows or something. I really do think she's upset at being denied that million dollars she begged for a few years ago. You'll have to search the blog to find out about that little incident.

So why am I talking about goofy dog stuff? Because, as you can see, there's a ton of snow out there and not much else to do. I got some cool winter pictures though. And when the snow melts there's nothing but mud between the house and the garage. I'd get some gravel to put on the path, but I can't find out where to get any. My dad would have known.

Maybe you can tell by what I have written that I'm feeling a little stir crazy right now. I do have to admit that I'd really rather be out on one of my everyday adventures. My brother sent me a bunch of cool deer pictures on my phone recently. Even he's doing better than me right now. Time to make some big plans. I'll talk to you later.

Welcome To The Wasteland

What is this vast field of frozen rubble you see here? You may be surprised by the answer. You may also be surprised that the temperature was 71° Fahrenheit that day. This was this last Saturday. The spring warm up has started, but not quite completely. We'll still have some slightly cooler days left.

But I still haven't answered the question yet, have I? The other two pictures won't help, so don't look at them yet. You'll have to read my story to find out the answer, and I really am going to get to it. Really. So read on.

I was expecting this warm day for awhile, so I had big plans for it. Then when the day finally came I woke up kind of late. I also ended up with lots to do at home. When I finally got out it was already mid-afternoon. That's not really a very good start, is it?

So when I finally got to my favorite nature park it was only half an hour till closing time. That place closes really early for some odd reason. I knew I wasn't going to have time for anything, so I just took a quick look around to see how much snow was left. Not much. I didn't bother with any pictures because there just wasn't enough time. I'll be back soon enough though.

As I was leaving I had the idea to go to downtown Sioux City and take a look at the Missouri River. I could get some good pictures there, and the day wouldn't be wasted after all. It's when I got down there that it all went wrong. I will tell you now that I was kind of shocked by what I found.

You may have already guessed. Maybe not. There is a parking lot down there from where you can sit and look out at the river. You can also walk down to the edge of the river. Nope. None of that. The frozen wasteland you see in my pictures is that very parking lot. The last two pictures show the wall of snow and ice that is blocking the view of the river.

They must have plowed all of the snow in the city down to this very spot. If you look to the top left of the first picture you can see a little bit of the river there in the distance. That's all I saw too. Everything else was these pictures. Welcome to the wasteland.

Most people like to blog about the beautiful things they find in their travels. I do some of that, but mostly what I have always done is try to show reality, good and bad. This may be considered bad, but it's really very interesting, at least to me. And I had a good time with the adventure, and with the story. That's what's important.

But wait, there's more! Not really in this post. But this wasn't all I saw that day. I visited more stuff that I think was a little more productive. I'll show that to you in my next post, which will come halfway soon. I think it'll be kind of interesting in a historical sense. You'll see. I'll talk to you later.

Hills And Snowstorms

I was so enthusiastic about my new favorite nature park in my last few posts. I still am. I'm not getting there enough though. It's kind of frustrating, but I'm letting the weather dictate what I do. I realize that I have to do it, and I'll tell you why.

Years ago when I was still in Michigan I was writing a new blog post every day. There was no kind of weather tough enough to stop me from going out to my nature parks. I remember going out in the pouring rain to check on the geese at one park. I went out when it was still dark. I went out when it was so foggy you couldn't see more than a few feet in front of you.

One time I went out to one of the wilder parks in the middle of a snowstorm. The park was kind of a big place, and not very many people went there even in good weather. I guess they liked the more civilized places. But in this snowstorm I knew I would be absolutely alone. There might not be anybody in this park for days.

About two thirds of the way into the park there is a creek. The creek had been there for a very long time because you had to go down three big hills - I guess they would be called hills - to get to it. The creek must have been a very wide and deep river at one time in the distant past. Now it was a small creek at the bottom of what was once that big river.

Anyway, I made it past this area and to the back of the park with no problem. It was on the way back that I didn't do so well. On my way back the snowfall increased greatly and the wind began to blow hard. I was beginning to think about being there all alone, and I thought maybe I should get out of there.

When I got to the top of the hill going down to the creek I was very conscious of how steep it was and of the slippery covering of snow. That still didn't matter. After a few steps my feet both went out from under me. I slid down that whole length of the hill all the way to the bottom. I was moving so fast all I could do was hold my camera up in the air and hope it didn't get damaged.

When I finally got to the bottom I was glad to realize that my camera and I were both unhurt. I was also now more focused than ever of just getting back out of the park. Once I got back up the other side of the ravine - that may be a better word for it - I was just fine. The rest of the way out of the park was all flat land. It's those hills that get you.

And that's my problem. My new favorite nature park is all hills, and as you might not be able to tell by my pictures, we just had the biggest snowstorm since I've been here in Iowa. When I say biggest I mean huge. I have a couple of garbage cans outside the house. The snow has completely covered them up. The snow is actually deeper than my garbage cans. This was one of the biggest snowfalls of my life.

So now I finally come to the end of this long written post. I'm reluctant to go to my nature parks because the snow covered hills are potentially very slippery. I'm going to try anyway in a few days just to see what it's like there. Maybe I'm worried over nothing. I guess I'm about to find out. I'll talk to you later with the results of that.

Update: Now that I'm finally posting this story temperatures are warm and  the snow is all melting. Now all of my slipping and sliding will be on mud.

Snowy Pictures From My Phone Camera

I decided to try a little experiment. In my last post I was complaining a little bit about having to adjust the pictures of snow from my good camera. I then decided to try taking some similar pictures with my phone. That's what you see here.

I didn't have to adjust or edit these pictures even a little bit. These pictures even without adjustment represent what it really looked like out there in all that snow. My big camera really is a good one, but my phone also has an excellent camera.

These pictures show that for a lot of your pictures all you need is a smartphone with a good camera. I'd use the phone exclusively for my pictures if I didn't need the zoom feature in my big camera. The basic scenery pictures actually come out better on the phone if I just shoot with automatic mode on both.

I do have another reason for showing you these pictures that are so similar to my last post. These are from a whole different snowstorm. All the snow had melted from the previous one and then it snowed almost as much this second time.

The main reason I'm sharing these pictures is because the snow stuck really beautifully to the trees and bushes this time. I didn't capture the falling snow this time though because I couldn't remember how to trun on the flash with the phone. And I was too lazy to check. I didn't really need it anyway.

Now all of this snow is melted too. We've had several warm days so all the snow has disappeared. Even the snowman that my dog kept barking at is long gone. She really hated that snowman. It wouldn't stop staring at her.

Since there's not much else to say about the snow I'm going to change the subject. As many of you know I've been complaining about the lack of trees at my local nature parks. It's frustrated me for the past few years. As I was thinking about it one night I finally realized the solution that I should have known all along.

There is one park here with lots of trees. I haven't visited it since my first year here because it's almost all hills.As I sat there thinking I realized that I want trees more than I don't want hills, so I'm going back to that park. It's just down the road from me and it has lots of animals just like my old parks back in Michigan.

So my next post will be from that hilly tree-filled nature park. I hope to have that one up soon. Maybe these next few posts will be like my old posts from my Michigan days. I really miss those. I just know I've finally found my solution. I can't wait. I'll talk to you later.

What a Huge Weather Change

I took these pictures the week before Thanksgiving. Since then all this snow melted and we had another big snowstorm that made things look just like this again. I'm back home and ready to get back to blogging again, but now everything outside is covered about a foot deep in snow. I'm going to have to be kind of creative with my posts.

I've been home again for a couple of weeks but it's been really hard getting back into the internet and blogging. When I'm away for awhile it gets hard to start writing again. Once I get started though I begin to feel like my old self again.

When I stepped outside the day I took these pictures it took me a little bit to remember how to get my camera to capture the snowfall properly. In case you're wondering, you need to turn on your camera's flash to capture falling snow with it. I have to change a few settings to get my camera to use the flash.

Another thing I've always had to do with any of my better cameras is adjust the pictures later on my computer. The camera always tries to adjust for the outside light, but always gets it wrong with snow. I end up having to go back in and brighten up the pictures. I hate that.

I'm not sure even these pictures show how much snow there really was. We ended up with about a foot of snow. It was coming down so much that it was hard to see very far. I hope the rest of the winter is a little easier as far as snowfall is concerned.

My next post, which is coming soon, will also be more snowy pictures. I'm not quite sure what to do after that. I'll try to get out to some nature parks if I can. The snow may prevent some of that. Maybe I'll get out the bird feeder again this year. I don't want to torture you too much with that though.

I wonder if I'll see any animals this winter other than running out in the road in front of me. It seems like that's the only time I see any around here. That happens at least once a day. I also really need to find a nature park here with some trees. I miss the trees. I'll talk to you later.

It's Snowing

It's snowing around here right now. I wish I would have remembered to use the flash on my camera, then I could have captured the snowflakes falling. I guess I'll have to do it next time.

I always liked this scene from the end of the street after a snowfall. All of the trees lined up there just look right to me for some reason. I think that's why I've taken this picture so  many times before.

It's supposed to keep snowing here so there should be a lot more soon. I probably won't bore you with any more pictures of it though. This much is plenty for now. Besides, I have lots of other stuff to share with you. I'm going to have to do extra posts for a little while to keep up with everything.

Even though my truck is in the shop right at the moment, I've been on a few good nature adventures. I've got lots of stuff to show you from those. The little bird feeder got very active all of a sudden today. I even accidently posted something from that, but I deleted it shortly after.

But this snow scene is enough for today. I'll talk to you later.

Snow

It snowed here, a lot. In the past week we've now had more snow here than any time since I've lived here. I'm glad my truck has four wheel drive. It makes it so much easier to ride down the roads around here right now with so much snow covering them.

It's also very cold here right now, so I'm not going on any significant adventures. I'll have to wait until it warms up just a little bit. The other day on a trip into town the temperature in the truck said it was -3 degrees Fahrenheit. That's -19 Celsius.

I did my best with these pictures, but I don't think you can really see how much snow we have. I took them at the end of the street in front of my house. I've done several pictures from here in the past. The problem is that the road was plowed, and I took these pictures with my phone. The phone takes excellent pictures, but it makes everything seem kind of small.

I usually like taking pictures at the back of the property, but this year there are several huge wood piles there blocking any good view of a natural setting. You can see one of the smaller piles on the left side of the pictures. My neighbor uses more wood than I do because that's his only means of heating. I'm glad I got my propane furnace fixed.

I keep thinking I need to post a little more often again. I've got several good things lined up, but I've slowed down a bit because I don't know when I'll be back outside because of the deep freeze. I've still been able to get some good stuff from around here. I'm glad I can run back inside when I get too cold.

I'm not sure what I'll have coming up next. I have a couple of good things I did right before it got cold and snowed. I also have some stuff from just today. After all my complaining of seeing no animals, I've actually been seeing just a few lately. We'll see what I feel like writing about next. I'll talk to you later.

It Just Won't Go Away

It just won't give up! It only took a couple of days after the last snowfall for it all to melt, but here it is again! I'm watching out the window as the snow keeps falling. I'm starting to believe that winter will never go away.

I think I've had enough of winter this year. I want to go outside and take pictures of birds and green plants. I want to go out without a jacket on. I want the warmth of the Sun to shine down on me. I'm ready for all of those things.

There's only one thing I can do to end all of this nonsense. Here it comes... I COMMAND THIS WINTRY SNOW TO END RIGHT NOW!

How's that? Do you think it will work? I certainly hope it does because I don't have any good pictures for another post until I can get out there to take more. Snow can be fun, but there's only so much more I can stand. It'll work. I know it will.