Holiday Snapshots

 Happy Holidays from River Song!

 Daisy doesn't understand about looking at the camera.

 December 21, and the river was up and rolling.  This year we had 79.2 inches of rain from January 1st to December 31.  The town of Yachats had 50.4 inches, the second lowest rainfall of the decade.

 I went to Colorado for my annual Christmas visit.  Gail took care of things at home and enjoyed her time to do projects.

Susanna, Smokey, and I had a lot of playtime.  Smokey was helping me to draw.

 Smokey is not even a year old, and has the energy to prove it.

 Uncle Nick and Susanna made the mandatory maple logs.

 Christmas dinner was a somber affair. 

 Andria, Susanna, Elaine, and Dave partying down.

 Yours truly, just landed from another planet.

 Nick, holiday stylin'.

 The annual Christmas Eve talent show just keeps getting more talent!  Soren did very well on the glockenspiel.

Andria and Nora on trombones.

Susanna did a rock steady and restrained drum backup for Andria.

Nick, Susanna, and Elaine acted out a classic Christmas story about a train.

Dave shared an excerpt from John Muir's writing, and I hammed up an altered version of "Twas the Night Before Christmas".

On Thursday, Dave led Nora, Nick, Yukon, and me on a hike on the west side of Pike's Peak.  It was clear, but cold, in the teens at the top with a breeze.

We started at about 9,700 feet and climbed to The Crags at about 10,800 feet.

Yukon just loves to burrow into the snow!

The scenery was well worth it!

We ate our lunch at the overlook at The Crags, freezing our fingers in the process. 

Yukon might have run 30 miles to our 6!

We had a fun game of Herd Your Horses.  Gail found this in a San Diego thrift shop, and it has been a big hit.

Back home, I gave Daisy her present from the Johansons, a stuffed llama.  We tell her it's a squirrel, though.

Gail made us an elegant place setting and meal for New Year's Eve dinner.  At the end of the table, Yummy approves.

Well, that's all I have - just random shots.  The last two days we have cleared up all the fallen trees and branches below the house, just in time for tonight's storm.  I got to break out my welder this afternoon after breaking off a wheel from the tractor mowing deck.  The fix is strong, if not pretty.

More Fall Photos

 We had this Amanita muscaria pop up on one of our trails. 

 We've had several alders fall this fall - enough firewood already!

 We had Thanksgiving up at Lorie's and Brian's in Newport.  The next day they all came down here to show Logan, Aaron, and Allison our place and go for a hike.

 They all liked Daisy.  Aaron, on left, is going to vet technician school in Minnesota.

 Strawberry Hill Beach has become one of my favorites.

 In the basaltic lava at Neptune beach we found bone fossils

Daisy sleeping with her squirrel.

 We found several patches of chanterelle mushrooms on our property for the first time.  This is the biggest one we've ever found anywhere!  Daisy lost her collar and in the hours we spent looking for it we went deep into our jungle.  It was the tags on the collar that we wanted to find.

 Super chant!

Slime molds are creeping around the woods, too!

I thought I had a couple chipmunks nibbling our tomatoes in the greenhouse, so I bought a Have a Heart trap to relocate them.  It turned out everyday I set the trap, I caught a chipmunk.  I caught 19 in about 3 weeks. I took most of them about a quarter mile down the road.  I finally stopped bothering.

Fall Photos

It's been awhile since I posted, but here are some shots from the past few weeks. 

 After all the September rain, things were looking rain foresty again.

 The fungi were popping and we were collecting all the chanterelle mushrooms we wanted (not these).

 The vine maples gave us our autumn color.

 "Driving Miss Daisy".  Daisy has been a real delight.  She continues to figure out what pleases us and does her best.

 The view from the living room.  We love the big leaf maple on the left with and without leaves.

 We have so much wood!  The alders keep falling, and we keep cutting and splitting.  Daisy finds this area exciting due to the rodents that take shelter here. We also have bats sleeping in our stacks of wood.

 This is what happened when I tried taking a selfie with Daisy.

We saw a number of coral mushrooms in September.

 We had very little rain after the first week of October which made for bike rides, hikes, and romps at the beach.  This is the elk forage area about 2 miles down the road.

The tidal bay in Yachats is our go to dog beach.  This is low tide and that is the town.

 For Halloween, we dressed up and went to a poetry reading in Florence. 

The venue was this little art center and gallery.

 Gail and Daisy spotted this female pileated woodpecker below the house. It stayed long enough for me to grab my camera and head on down.

The Great Blue Heron that has been a fixture on the river here has lost its charm.  In a matter of a few hours at night, it ate up most of our goldfish.  We saw a couple fish left out of the roughly 20 we had, but now its been days since I've seen any.  We have watched those fish grow since we moved here and in a flash, they're gone.  I've added some hides for any fish that might be left.

 We have had a flock of 4 hooded mergansers patrolling our stretch of the river, lately,  and Gail and Daisy spotted them again this morning.  I took these shots from the living room deck in rather dark light.  Hood up!

 Hood down.  A male and 2 females here.

The lovely foursome.