Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Updates and Happy New Year!!!

So its been a while since I have taken the time to create a post. Not that we get too many readers but I thought I should since we have been back from our vacation for a while now.

After my last post about how I was at work for 7 straight days working day and night during the Arctic Blast of '08, Emma and I went to Bend for 5 days to play in the snow, relax and celebrate the New Year and our wedding anniversary a few days earlier.

Of course not realizing that we would be getting 16 inches of snow here in Portland the week before, we might have done something else. Anyway, it was worth the trip since the weather was great and the snow finally stopped falling. It was never really an issue for us to get around town during the many days of snow and Bend turned out to not get any snow other then in the higher elevations near Mt Bachelor.

One of the days, we decided to head up to the mountain near by and see what it was like. We had no idea how much snow was actually on the mountain and put off renting snow shoes for the day. Turns out they had about 4 feet or so where we went to play. We realized that we didn't plan ahead very well with out gear and clothing but ended up playing a little in the snow. We did however plan a little ahead for Puma. I found a few articles online that talked about how when dogs are in the snow they can get snow packed between their toes and it can cause problems. So we went to REI and bought him some outdoor booties to wear. It was sort of crazy at first when we put them on. He wasn't a fan but then got into wearing them a bit. He galloped around like a horse and ran like mad to try and get them off. He threw himself on the snow and wiggled all about. Only one of them came off but the others seem to work great. The next day was a different story.

The next day we set out with more clothing and gear and also rented some snowshoes for the day. We headed back to the same location we went the day before and started our "hike". we got Puma's booties on and this time he managed to fling them off within minutes. Probably planning in his sleep how he was going to accomplish this task. Turns out he was fine and we checked his paws once in a while for snow.

The hike that we went on was more like a stroll through a well packed tunnel of sorts. The trail was easy to follow and the snow was about 2 feet high on either side. The snowshoes worked great and it was a little more tough to get around then a normal hike but it was a blast. We were both surprised at how well the shoes worked and kept you above the snow and kept you from sliding down the hills. I would highly recommend trying it out if you are ok with playing in the snow!!

Our actual anniversary was yesterday. Emma has a post that should be coming soon. We both had to work so it was pretty uneventful but we did most of the celebrating in Bend.

Here are some pictures from our trip. Others can been seen here and some Christmas photos are here.

Emma Staying Warm

PumaSnow

Puma in his new booties

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Emma and Puma



Snowshoeing Scenery

Central Oregon

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Was this just a vacation mustache?

Ryan and Emma said...

No have a goatee but you can't see it in the picture...hehe.