Some photos from an afternoon hike to Goose Egg Mountain and Kloochman Rock from late January when I was itching to get off flat land and away from grey skies. That pointy one on the left is Kloochman and the dome on the right is Goose Egg.

Here’s the view from the top of Goose Egg looking west toward Rimrock Lake. And a tree that I think I’ve taking a picture of on three different hikes now.

My legs felt reasonably strong scrambling up Goose Egg and it was nice to hike in shorts and a t-shirt at times. I’m sure it’s not nearly so snow-less up there after a month of steady mountain snow. Winter started out with drought worries around here, but we went from 55 percent of average mountain snowpack at the beginning of February to 91 percent by the end. Ten feet of snow between February 10-21 alone at most ski area, one of the snowiest months on record.

I ran most of the way back down the slope. At some point, the soles on my ancient Lowa boots that mom bought me for an Outward Bound trip fifteen years ago finally blew out, though I didn’t notice until back in town. Heck of a run. After Goose Egg I jogged over to Kloochman and bounded around on the talus beneath the still intact columns. Here are a couple columns pictures.

Quick homestead tour, photos from the past couple days. Our brief snow deluge didn’t stick around long. Not really spring yet, but seems to be getting close. Warm enough that I was in shorts and flip flops most of the afternoon on Friday and had the house windows open for a couple hours. I’ve started working in the garden a little, getting soil/compost prepped. Lots of crocuses and other bulbs are a couple inches out of the ground already. The rosemary seems to have survived the winter.

Dogs enjoying the sun. Here’s Parko getting ready to pounce on Nora and Parko getting kicked in face. Take that you bully!

Old, fat Taylor going for the Frisbee. She’s been a little hobbled with a bad back leg since last summer, but still lots of spirit. She gets really happy on the sunny days and squirms around on her back in the grass. And Parko, looking ridiculous, but far more coordinated.

Here’s the tile job in the front entryway that I finished last weekend. Hey, only took me ten months to get around to finishing this up since I put down the self-leveling cement underlayment. About par for me. Lots of weird cuts to match up with our curvy walls and the first time I tried even a simple pattern, but I think it turned out great. Next step is getting baseboards cut, painted, and installed, hopefully in less than ten months.

Our new dining room table. We had it custom made by a local furniture guy. It’s made from reclaimed wood from an old Yakima lumber mill and I think fits the character of our 1940s farmhouse quite well. Lots of neat wood grain and and interesting grooves. Like it. Moroccan red chairs to go with it, because color is fun. That’s not the rug that will be under it long term. We have a 9×12 coming some time next week. And here’s our new living room furniture and rug. Not entirely functional yet (still waiting on a TV stand). We’re having the same guy who did the table build us a simple media console. Hopefully in a month or so, things will be complete.

Snowpocalypse! Finally. I thought we might not get any winter this year. Up until this weekend I think we’ve had about 1 inch of snow total for the season and last year at this time we were in the 50s all month, so we seemed to be running out of time when this surprise storm came through and dropped a foot of powder. Here’s a yard shot, after things had compacted a little in today’s afternoon sun, for comparison to the one last month.

We went out to dinner last night, driving through six inches of street snow under snowflake-swirled streetlights. Everything quiet and white, the roads mostly empty. We’re supposed to be in the 40s again later this week, so not sure how long it’ll stick, but it’s great to get a taste of the season at least. The dogs were a little less enthusiastic this morning to paws packed full of snow.

But once we got them playing again, they had a ball.

Very unwintery winter here so far (no complaints). Here’s a photo of our yard taken a week ago of what winter has pretty much looked like this year:

We finally had our first inch of snow a couple days ago, but temps in the 50s this morning pretty much took care of that brief accumulation. Nice try winter, bring on summer!

So… I guess I skipped a couple months of updates. Maybe I’ll go back and add some blurbs for the stuff that was photo-worthy at least, but no promises. If I know me like I think I know me, it doesn’t seem like something I’m going to jump on any time soon. The backlog of photos that I need to go through, parse, edit, and upload is becoming substantial at this point.

Here’s the Crib Notes version at least: October was great, lots of sunshine, a couple more mountain outings squeezed in. A 30-mile solo outing to Kololo Peak in the Glacier Peak Wilderness was notably memorable. November was cold, but mostly sunny still, didn’t get out much though. December was really cold early on, but a trip to SE Asia interrupted that nicely. Here’s a photo from mid-December of Chicken Head Island in southern Thailand:

A few photos from my quick two-day run through the Enchantments this weekend. I’ll add more when I get a minute. Couldn’t have asked for nicer October conditions.