Snowshoeing....

 Breakfast of champions!  After a hearty breakfast  of hot waffles topped with sour cream and homemade chokecherry syrup I was ready to start my day.  It was such a treat to break the seal on a mason jar filled with a little summer sweetness!  We had another cold day again, but the temperatures climbed to 10 degrees by noon-- warm enough for a walk on my snowshoes.

The grandangel came visiting today.  We have a weekly date.  She comes to our house and plays all day long and all the focus is on her!  After a wild rumpus of floor ping-pong and chase, she went down for her nappy and Grammy went out for a walk while Grampy stayed in and listened in case she needed something.

The following pictures will be mostly snowy pictures of my walk.  You really had to "be there" to get the drift (get it?) of the depth and breadth of snow, but at least you will have an idea of what it's like to walk on "frozen water."  (all photos may be enlarged if you click them)

Here are My Woods, a shelter belt of trees that protects livestock on the plains.  It always drifts full of snow and makes the snowshoeing fun.  The drifts are hard in most places, makes easy walking, but walking up and down the drifts is something like walking on waves (I think).  Thankfully I have good snowshoes that have metal teeth on the bottoms.  They can really grip the snow.  There were places where the snow was softer and the dogs and I had a difficult time walking through it.

Here is one of those waves I was talking about.  They are all over in the Woods where I walk.

Snow ball?  It's the top of a fence post.  Looks like something from Whoville.

These are sharptail grouse tracks.  See how they sink in on the left hand side and when they step on harder snow, they stay on top?  Below are circles of grouse tracks.  When I saw them, they made me think of the game "Fox & Geese," a chasing game that we used to play in the snow when I was a girl.

See the bigger dents in the snow?  That's where the snow is soft and the poor grouse fell in a little.  They were all sitting out here when the dogs and I came upon them and spooked them up and away.

These are the three wild turkeys we have living in another shelter belt, not where I was walking today.   J. and I  were out driving and spied them so I snapped a picture of them walking away from us in single file.