Another Snowy Day

Well it looks like winter is hanging on today. I hadn't paid attention to the weather lately but sometimes it really doesn't matter since they never seem to get it right.

Sunday morning we woke to more snow on the ground which was a nice surprise and then again today after Emma got home from the gym it once again started to snow.

The road that I drive goes over a mountain and changes as much as 1000 ft. in elevation so I had expected some more snow. Turns out either people REALLY didn't pay attention to the weather it was was not expected. The truck did a wonderful job as usual and made it with no problem but others were not as fortunate.

I passed a dozen cars that were stuck on the hills and couldn't go any further. Also passed a garbage truck that slide off the road and ended up against the mountain. Then another truck slide into the side of the dump truck. Luckily I think it happened just before I arrived and the people in front of me pulled over.

I managed to snap a few pictures of other vehicles along my route that were not having a good day.

Snowshoeing Mount St. Helens

On Thursday evening Emma's mom Suzan came to visit us for a few days. We had planned ahead and reserved some snowshoes from REI for the weekend and head out to find some snow. We didn't have a good idea where to go or if where we were going had much snow or open roads to travel on.

We found a few Sno-parks on a road up to Mount St. Helens and so we headed out to see what we could find.

The road was a little tore up from the recent cold weather we had but we found a spot at the end of a road that they pretty much decided to stop plowing. It wasn't much of a trail and really just a road that was being used by snowplows and cross country skiers. We took our time, stopped and had lunch part way through the hike and headed back the way we came. It was a good workout and the weather couldn't have been any better. We ended up peeling off layers that we thought we needed since it was 28 when we left the house in the morning.

Here are some pictures below and more can be found here.

Patton Update

I am a few days late on this update but I thought I should put this out there.

Patton was ADOPTED!!! My friend Jen told me last week that he was going to be at work one last time before he was going to his new home.

It took a while for him to find a home but I think he was worth it. Great job Jen!!!

Here was his original post and below are the last pictures..:(

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.