December 30, 2011

Icy road




JB installing the game cam

 












After it stopped raining and blowing on Wednesday, the dogs and I went for a hike down the road to the Wood Spirit.  About a mile and a half round trip.  It was brown just about everywhere except for the road which was still ice.  Melting ice with water on it, but ice nevertheless.  I cleared the few small rocks and branches that had fallen on it, surprised that there weren't more than just a few after all that wind.  It was very odd the way the snow had frozen around many of the deer prints and then started melting.  Made them look like we have a herd of giant elk Up Here.  It was a good hike and a good workout.  All downhill going and all uphill coming home.

Our son gave us a game cam for Christmas and we were able to get it installed on Wednesday.  It is a Primos Hunting Truth Cam 46.  I picked a spot where it looks like there is a lot of deer traffic which is on the east side of our north ridge, between the ridge and the driveway.  We programed it for 30 second videos to start with.  I wanted to check it on Thursday, but JB thought we should wait at least 48 hours.  However Thursday morning he changed his mind and we pulled the card to download.  Got a couple good videos of the dogs, but no other wildlife!  It's a very sharp picture, even the infrared which Dinga tripped at 4:10 a.m.  We changed it to a 15 second video and will check it again tomorrow.

After a nice afternoon, the downpour started again Wednesday evening and it looked like it would be like that off and on for the rest of the week.  It was really getting muddy and the dogs had to be wiped off each time they came back in.  However the wind picked up again that afternoon and continued til yesterday morning, so it pretty much dried out all the mud.  The temperature dropped and it finally started snowing mid afternoon Thursday, and the forecast for us has changed from rain to snow through today.  Wenatchee was 52 on Wednesday which is 21 degrees above normal.  We were 36 and that's about 10 degrees warmer than normal for us.  However, this morning it looks like we received two to three inches (can't really tell with a flashlight).  Our Winter Wonderland is back.

During the week between Christmas and New Year, I always feel a really strong urge to organize and clean.  To prepare for the New Year.  Closets and drawers that are in disarray from a year's use call to me for help.  Wednesday I heard the sideboard calling and reorganized all the kitchen towels, table cloths, dish rags, etc.  I also started clearing up the Christmas decorations and finished taking them all down yesterday, so the house is looking a little empty.

We spotted a couple more coyotes on the east ridge yesterday afternoon.  This has really been the year for them.  Usually we rarely hear them, let alone see them.  Larry shot and killed one this year up a small canyon from his house.  He says if you just leave the carcass, it will keep the others away.  As much as they make me nervous because of our dogs, I would really hate to shoot one.  Just my tree-hugging, city mind kicking in, I guess.

I am so thankful that I got the plastic sheeting laid on the ground on both sides of the house.  The water seems to be draining away from it nicely.  Every house with a basement that I have ever lived in, as far back as I can remember, has had drainage problems.  As in flooding.  So I think our current drainage problem is part of my karma.  When I was in high school, I remember a particularly bad basement flood in a house we were renting where we were wading in water up past our knees.  When I was in grade school, we didn't have a basement, but we did have a crawl space.  One December something happened to flood it.  Don't remember if it was a broken pipe or what, but the worst thing about it was that we couldn't go to Spokane for Christmas that year.  I'm sure it was as bad as the Christmas I had the measles and couldn't go.  Don't have any specific memories as I'm sure I have blocked them out.

Thought for the day: Don't listen to those who say you're taking to big a chance, [if he had], Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.   Neil Simon