Can we have another January, PLEASE??

We can't believe over a month has gone by since we published an update. A month of super cold weather, beautiful sunrises and sunsets, hauling wood, clearing the driveway of snow drifts (not exactly sure why--where are we going??), keeping the fire warm, SHANE LEARNED TO SKI (WHAT?!) and of course birding from our yard. We have burned about half the split wood now with about eight to nine weeks of serious, day/night wood burning left of winter. April/May will be just mornings and some nights of fires. So we have plenty of wood left. But as we turned the calendar to February, we are definitely hoping for more snow and cold for the next three months for sure! Here are some highlights of our activities from January.

We drove the Polaris to Elk Lake Resort for lunch. This was about 35 miles round trip. Some sections of the road were blown free of snow, other areas had five to 15 foot drifts and as you can see from the first picture below, no road visible for miles. Luckily, we are familiar with the Valley and know where to go. But definitely, this is not a trip to take in bad weather! We saw a family of Trumpeter swans, 10 Mallard ducks, numerous moose and surprisingly, two enormous bull elk with antlers still in tact. Elk have left the Valley for the winter, but these two have remained.

The drift along the road hasn't quite buried our mailbox yet!

Shane finally started his first "Retirement Puzzle" on the south porch. The view of the Centennial Mountains is awesome (and distracting!)

The cross-country skiing is outrageously fun. It's just you and the wilderness.

We have a variety of feeders hanging from the Aspen trees for the birds wintering over in the Valley. A Steller's Jay just grabbed a peanut from the "peanut stump". The "peanut stump" is buried in the snow at the base of the feeder pole. In the second picture, a Clark's Nutcracker is pecking at the suet and another is grabbing a peanut from the "peanut stump". Check out the Birds link in the navigation bar for links to information on all the different birds we observe in our yard and in the Valley.