Winter Wonderland

First, I have to tell everyone that the sale of our Ohio house closed this week. Here is my sigh of relief. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Thanks again to Bobby and Cindy for being on top of that for us. Here is a picture of me thinking about what it is like to not have to pay both a mortgage and rent.Julie and I went snowshoeing again yesterday. We went to a place just outside of Idaho City (55 miles northeast of Boise) called Whoop-Um-Up. We had went here with a group of people back in December. It was just the two of us and Abby this time. We did just shy of 3 miles. The trail started somewhat easy. However, after about 20 minutes we had passed the other group of four people who were on the trail. Then we found out why the trail was easy. That group was breaking the trail for us. That means they were the ones who were walking on and packing down the fresh snow on the trail. The trail had received about 10-15 inches of new snow during the week and no one had been on it until yesterday. Here is picture of me and Abby in one of the unbroken areas. Notice how little you can see of Abby.
We ended up splitting trail breaking duty with that other group. The hike was a lot of fun but we had to work for it.

Most of the time Abby loved playing in the snow even if it was a little hard for her to get through at times. She would stop to eat snow. She would lay down and roll in it. Here is one of her more snow covered moments.
We did a second short hike after the first hard one. We did this one after talking to other snowshoers in the parking lot. They had broke this trail while we were breaking ours. That is why we did it. Not as much work this time. As you can see from this picture, I had enough energy to make a snow angel.
Overall, the trip was great with lots of snow, great views and very quiet.

Lastly, I was sad to learn that my friends Paul and Amy's dog Rugby passed away this week. Rugby lived in my house at OU. I have very fond memories of him.