For my little pal...

While I was putting the elves in their clubhouse I thought...I'll make a little story for my neighbor's son, Aiden who is nearly 2 yrs old. 

What if Santa decided to try a truck to make deliveries in our area?
Gosh, what would happen.

Santa Gets Stuck...

A Good Samaritan Arrives

 That didn't work...so

they called on the Elf

with a magic sled...

Oh my, guess who

showed up to give a push!
And the Reindeer pulls!

Santa is on his way

thanks to all

the help!

I sent this series to my little pal's mom and she said he loved it! What child wouldn't?

Treasure Hunt

January 4th

Off I went into the woods with Morris trailing me.  I haven't been able to be in the woods since....well.

Since I went with the hunter to retrieve his dog...that we didn't actually retrieve.  That was before we had the wicked December 29th snowstorm.

The air was cold and crisp and the sun almost felt warm on my back as we headed towards the creek bottom.

I thought I would regret not wearing my snow shoes and I did.  Even though there was a pretty good critter trail, I still had to 'break trail' through the deep snow.  We'd had over 9 inches of the stuff about a week ago and it hasn't gone away. 

Morris kindly let me break the trail as he hopped from one boot print to another behind me.
As soon as we got to the creek bed though he was happy to lead.

Walking along the first section of the creek bed was pretty good though.  Morris did his thing. He checked every twig and rock in case he had to leave some scent behind.

You can see that there had been a lot of animal traffic in the past week through the creek bottom. 
I was actually surprised by the amount of turkey tracks we came across.

Some of the turkey tracks were huge!

I made the bend in the creek and looked down at the ice formation. In the sunlit area across the creek the ice was melted.  Here in the northern cold shadows the water slowly dripped from the land above and made beautiful ice formations.

Since daylight is always an issue in this valley, I hurried up and walked down the trail wasting no time other than to call Morris every time he lagged behind.

He was in a sniffing and 'marking' mood and I was in a 'let's get this road on the show' mood.

When I got to the main part of the valley I stopped and just listened and looked around.  The sun here was so bright that the snow actually hurt my eyes and I'd wished I'd brought sunglasses.

I looked at my watch and was disappointed to see that it was already late in the afternoon.  I'd wished I'd had more time to hike to the east side of the valley where the ravine had filled with blue ice from the spring last winter.

It wasn't going to happen today.
So instead I walked back over to the creek bed and found the old coyote den.
It had icicles on it!

I didn't see any sign that coyotes were using this little cave.  One year I found a den that was in use and the area was littered with bones.

I looked down in the creek at my feet and saw what looked like a vertebrae laying in the water. I stared at it for a few moments and then looked carefully around to see if I could see any other bones laying about.

I wondered then if it hadn't washed down into the creek from the hillside above.
Morris came up alongside me.  He was doing his Jack Russell shake and quake. Either he was cold or he was nervous.  
I reached down and removed the leaves.

Oh!  I found a treasure!

A raccoon skull in excellent condition.  What a treasure! I had been looking for another intact one to paint and decorate and here I'd stumbled on one accidentally.

Which is how I always find my 'treasured' skulls.
I walked a bit further downstream and Morris kept getting more hesitant and clingy.

I'm sure he smelled coyotes or was just plain chilled.  So I leaned down and asked if he wanted 'a ride' and up into my arms he climbed.

I decided to turn around head home with the cold and tired old dog in my arms.  I couldn't blame him, the snow was up past his chest if he got off the trails and true to his nature he ran full out everywhere he went.

Besides, I'd already found some interesting tracks and had the bonus of finding a real treasure of a raccoon skull.

On our way home I stopped a few times in the narrowest part of the creek bed to grab some shots of the sunlight above us reflecting on the waters.

This is of the same spot, one standing and the other shot laying in the snow with a very low tripod.  It made quite a bit of difference in the reflections.

A thought about shooting in these conditions.  The camera is going to be confused between the warm tones and the brilliant whites.  A bit of editing will help keep the snow white and the colors as they should be.  

I hope to get back out today and see what is on the other end of the valley.

However we have the farrier coming at 10 am to trim feet and look at Siera's foot.  We may have to go with a special shoe to help her one frog grow back ... more on that later.

What a difference a day makes.

Here is a peek at the road.  Yes, this was early and those tracks were gone in about 20 minutes.
The snow was coming at about an inch and hour or a while.

It did ease up in the late evening, but the blowing snow always makes for interesting road conditions.

The wind carved some beautiful snow sculptures.  Hard packed drifts!

Surprisingly the donkeys didn't seek shelter, the temps were not cold and they stayed out in it playing.  Sally sported some interesting icicles on her brows.

And yes, I checked her undercoat and it felt nice warm and dry.

So today I decided to take advantage of the warmer temps and head out with my older snow shoes and my faithful dog, Morris...my photography assistant and resident clown.

No black and white for this day!
Hello sunshine!

For the first time in weeks I could actually enjoy the sunlight on my skin.

The creek was rather pleasant and I actually didn't get cold at all this visit.

 
I stood with the tripod in the creek and got a few nice shots which made me quite pleased.

The snow was getting mushy and clumping onto my snow shoes as we headed back.  It was warm, nearly 40 degrees.  A temp we haven't seen in ages.

Morris felt invigorated and decided to end our outing with some 'snow swimming' Jack Russell style.

Take a Hike!

Okay, I hope that didn't sound mean at all.  But I just had to try out my new snowshoes.  
It is funny how after a few days of bitter cold, it doesn't seem to bother me much.  
Of course I do dress for it.

The snowshoes worked wonderfully.  Morris even liked them enough to try and walk on the backs of them.  I took them off when I got to the creek and left them on the trail to put back on when I returned.  This meant coming home the exact way I'd left, but that was okay.

Morris as usual, had a blast.
Here he tries to dig out a mouse nest.

Later on as we got nearer PeeWee's Valley, we heard the ruckus of snow mobiles.  I swear, they must put something on those things so that they literally scream.  The echo in the valley was a bit loud.

Morris didn't really like them at all and we didn't travel any further down the valley.  I had intended to go to the big spring and get some shots of the frost on the rocks, but that will have to wait  for another day.
The shot above was taken with my FujiFilm FinePix HS 30 EXR in RAW mode and then edited with Fuji Film's software.  I think this is some of the finest software that any camera company has ever come up with for RAW.  Nikon has a stand alone converter, but it isn't as good as this.

My purpose today was to try out some more functions on the Fuji and on the Nikon D3100.  I was trying to avoid the dreaded blue cast that I seem to get quite a bit on snow shots.  There are some tricks to helping with it and I'll review that on another post.

After about an hour Morris began to try and walk ~ not walk on his feet.  He kept holding his paws up and then began to shiver pretty hard.

I decided to pack things up and head back home.  Feeling a bit sorry for him I held out my arms and he climbed into them.  He then rode with his back feet on my pistol belt and spare cartridge, his front feet cradled into my arm or sometimes...he turned and rode looking backwards over my shoulder.

We got home just before dark and began to help hubby out with the chores.  I had let Morris in and he raced towards the heater which was blowing warm air.
It was a great day.