Our furnace blew up, quite literally, three weeks ago, covering our house in soot and blowing a couple holes in the living room wall. Pretty exciting and probably lucky nobody got hurt. Not our fault, the furnace repair company we called to service the furnace made multiple bad choices when working on it. We’re working with their liability insurance at the moment to pay for the damages. In the meantime we’ve been living over at the old house, minus internet, but plus heat.

Other than that though, things have been great around here. The inversion hung around for about a week and a half, which was kind of depressing, but we’ve had lots of blue skies and temps in the mid-40s to low-60s since then. Snow-free since early January I think. Here are a few photos out and about with Parko a few weeks back when I needed to get away from the inversion.

Tried hiking at Goose Egg Mountain, but Parko was a baby about the chest deep snow. I carried him up the slope for a while until, dripping with sweat, I quickly realized how ridiculous it was to be carrying my dog up a mountain. So we drove up Highway 12 a ways to nice views of the Cascades and Mount Rainier.

Back west on 12, I just picked a random spot on the side of the road and we ran around the rock formations and the Tieton River. Sloppy footing with lots of ungulate tracks and droppings everywhere.

Still further west on 12, we stopped at Bear Canyon and ran down the trail there for about a half mile. Frozen waterfalls and frosty pine branches overhead.

And finally back into the inversion and a drive-by of the elk feeding station just before dark.