Winter Light

 

These pictures are all from Friday afternoon.  I love this time of year - sunset starts around 2:30 and goes until the sun sets around 4:45.  The light is golden for a long time.  

The hard part about taking pictures of it though is that my camera always want to turn the snow on high white.  So at home I have to pump up the color 'cast' and 'warmth' to get it looking like it was when I took the picture.  I already have the camera light settings on shade.

The dogs love this cross country ski through the trees and 'bunny land'.  They are on the go the entire time running this way and that in the deep snow.  At home they sleep on the furniture and chase rabbits in their sleep.

Patrick

Cross Country Skiing at the Pass

 

look closely and you can see Red hot on the trail of a snowshoe hare

All week and much of last week the dogs and I have been XC skiing at the golf course.  It has been excellent XC skiing, but after a week it had gotten a little repetitive going around and around the same figure eight loop.  So yesterday we drove to the pass to go skiing.

The last storm ended with rain to the mountaintops and high wind so the snow on high is a little too blown off, crusty and breakable for downhill skiing.  But the crust country skiing was okay.  Actually not as good as it is at the golf course but certainly different.

The dogs and I toured around through the alder and spruce trees.  The dogs chased snowshoe hares this way and that. I am not sure if chasing is the right word - I think they more tracked the hares than actively chased them.  I'd see a hare bob on by and then 60 to 70 meters behind I'd see a black dog blundering through the brush on the rabbit trail.  Then the dog would go the wrong way.

Patrick

At the bottom of this post is a video of the dogs howling along to the tsunami warning test alarm.  Every Wednesday at 2 PM the alarm goes off as a test, and every time the dogs rush out the dog door and howl along to the alarm.

Last Sunday's Storm

 

I just noticed that I have not posted in almost a week.  Last Saturday night and into Sunday morning it snowed like crazy and then it turned to rain on Sunday.  It re set everything.

I knew it was going to turn rain and went up to ski with the dogs at first light.  It was already raining when we left the house in the dark, but by the time we got to the golf course it was getting light and all snow rather than rain. And there were no other tire tracks in the road.  We were the first ones to drive to the pass.

It was a total blizzard at the pass and the skiing was quite good.  But it was also pretty windy and hard to see with snow blowing in my eyes.  The dogs could get around in the deep powder, and one of the highlights was when Bodi busted up a snowshoe hare on one side of the trail and it ran in front of me across the trail and literally came face-to-face with Red on the other side of the trail. Manna from Heaven for Red!  It was quite the commotion, but the dogs have no chance chasing the rabbits in the deep snow.  The video at bottom shows the depth of the snow better than the pictures.

On Monday it got cold again and it has been cold all week.  I've been skate skiing with the dogs every day until today at the golf course.  Pretty fast conditions!  I actually took a bunch of pictures skate skiing with the dogs at the golf course and then deleted them all by accident re formatting the memory card. 

Patrick

Driving to the pass before dawn - first tracks on the road!

In the lee of Pyramid

 

Kodiak now has plenty of snow but the last few days have been super windy.  Too windy for skiing in the alpine.  I actually did get up into the alpine on Monday with the dogs and it was scary windy.  So instead of the alpine I've been cross country skiing at the golf course.  The golf course is in the lee of Pyramid and while it has still been windy - it is nothing like it would be up on some exposed ridge on the mountain.

The golf course can be a little repetitive - loop after loop around the same old landscape - but on the plus side there are no surprises.  It is also super convenient.  And now with all the recent wind - even if it does get less windy, the alpine will still be a drifted and blown off mess.

Patrick

Around the house

 

Finally, my last Arizona Thanksgiving post.  This one is all about doings around the house.  Mostly what we did around the house was swim in the pool or read around the pool - but I seemed to have taken practically no pictures of the pool area.  Only good one is of a bee in the water that I took a picture of from below with my water proof camera.

The top picture is of me cooking dinner on the grill.  I love that grill.  I think that grill has been in use since my grandparents had the house.  I love going out into the desert and finding dead mesquite branches to bring back and cut up for fuel for the grill.  No Safeway 'mesquite briquets' for me - just the real thing collected in the desert.  I even brought a wood saw down from Alaska to saw the branches.  Last time we visited I discovered that none of the local stores carried normal wood saws.

Another favorite activity is watching the sunset from the front deck.  This happened every day at about 4:30 - and it is amazing how fast the sun sets this far south.  In Alaska sunsets take a lot longer.  Sit on the deck and have a glass of win with crackers and salami and listen to the quails call.  This activity has a very long tradition.

A new tradition is visiting the Goodwill store out past Safeway.  Last year Stuey and I got all our shirts there.  This year I only found one decent shirt but Nora got a leather jacket and a sweet pink flamingo hat. 

One evening driving back from Safeway Nora and I saw a badger cross the road.  We drove up next to him/her and she was looking right back at us.  Looked exactly like Bucky the Badger - all the white around the face.  Then just as Nora got the iPhone out to take a picture she ran away.  I am an alumni of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a huge fan of the Badgers.  This is the first real live badger I have ever seen in my life.  I take it as a very good omen or augury.  I gather auguries were based on observations of birds.  So maybe there should be a word for 'good things foreseen' based on the observation of badgers.

Patrick

My favorite grill in the whole wide world - I've been using it for 30 plus years!

Nora modeling some cool Goodwill discoveries

Pretty much a 'Sasquatch' picture but that is an honest to god badger trotting away on the mid right

A boneless turkey for Thanksgiving

 

This turkey has already been de boned and re stuffed with stuffing!

This was our Thanksgiving turkey.  As usual I deboned it and then stuffed it with stuffing to make it look like a 'normal bird'. Click here for a post of last year's turkey or here for a little more in depth explanation on how I do it.  This year my sister took a bunch of pictures of me de boning and stuffing the turkey.  So this post shows a bit more of the process.  The biggest benefit of deboning the turkey beforehand is that you can make stock with the bones and use it in the mashed potatoes and gravy.  Big Plus!

Looking at last year's turkey and comparing to this year's bird, I see that they both got burned on the top of the breast.  I think the oven is a little small or maybe I should try lowering the rack.

Patrick

Making turkey stock

Sunday

 

On Sunday I was not expecting much.  Nora wanted to go skiing and Sunday morning it was raining and 42 degrees - ughhhh. Then just before we headed up to the mountain it started to clear off and actually got sunny.  We climbed up the mountain and it was still foggy on top but the sun was trying to break through the mist.  Then by the time we got down to the car the whole mountain cleared off and there was not a cloud in the sky.  We should have waited 15 minutes before we skied down.

Still it was a good ski.  The snow was soggy, but it was also fast.  A good day skiing!

Patrick