Monday, December 24, 2012

First day of winter

Erin, I and the dogs went for a walk along the Willow River in New Richmond last Saturday afternoon and we had a fine time enjoying the beauty of the season.  Of course we took our cameras along and of course we took pictures of the dogs, who otherwise were busy doing more fun things.

Here's an image of the Willow River in winter.
















A close up of the icy flow.












The dogs posing nicely in the glow of the setting sun.











Missy in a contemplative pose.
















Erin scoping out the fading light.

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Thankgiving up north

Erin and I and the dogs went up north to visit our friends Donna and Terry in the R.M. of Piney, Manitoba over the Thanksgiving holiday (the U.S. one, not the Canadian Thanksgiving which is in October) and we had a lovely visit and got in a lot of walks in the woods.  It was very warm the day we left with temperatures in the 50F range, but it got colder soon enough and we had a few inches of snow fall on Thursday and Saturday afternoon & Sunday morning.  We also got in a trip to Roseau, Minnesota (Terry and Donna live very close to the U.S. - Canada border) to check out a craft show at the high school there and an art gallery that Donna likes where I purchased some pottery.  Erin had a great time talking with a local wildlife photographer and I also found a pair of alpaca socks I liked.  Then we stopped by the grocery store to buy a few more food items for our big turkey dinner on Saturday which was very good as Terry loves to cook and is a very good cook indeed.  I did take some photos with my little Canon A2200 camera as part of the trip too, so here they are:

When we first arrived, the cats knew something was up and they didn't like it at all.  They spent the weekend avoiding the dogs, but did have access to the house at least, as the dogs weren't allowed in the house.














The dogs were allowed in an addition called the Treehouse where they had a great view of the outdoors.  They of course wanted more, and they did get to go out often.  This is Missy and Ceilidh at the window.













The dogs also liked just hanging around with us in the Treehouse, with Tucker snuggling up next to Erin here.










Here's Tucker at the edge of the woods on Thursday morning, waiting for us to catch up.















There were two or three deer that came around occasionally when the dogs weren't out, and we also saw a few recent wolf and older bear tracks on our walks.









After it snowed on Thursday, Tucker was having a great time.











The dogs all crashed out on the couch in the Treehouse on Saturday, probably dreaming of leftover turkey.










Ceilidh and Tucker waiting for me to come down from the deck to throw the Chuck-It (a canvas frisbee toy) for them on Sunday morning.









One last walk in the woods later on Sunday morning after some more fresh snow as the front was moving through with a cold wind blowing the snow around.














Yup, it's cold.