The winding down of the season and thoughts of palm trees and white sand.

Where has the time gone? I still have a lot to do and my lists for my lists are quite long.We leave for Florida in just a matter of days and the house needs to be winter ready.A lot will happen while we're gone and we will come back to bitter cold and snow.

Snow poles are going up to protect ditches and well, septic,etc. and we've put up a 100ft snowfence off the driveway (this we tried before doing it all wrong, hopefully learned the correct procedure this time). Its supposed to help with the major snow drifting we get. Deck furniture in and flower/herb pots taken down. Cut a bunch of herbs to use before leaving. They last a long time in a vase of water.

yep those are more elk, I hasten to say this is not the hunting ground

Many comings and goings at pre -dawn and late hours during Mark's 5 day hunting period. He did at least get to shoot the new gun, but sadly did not "bag" one. His friend and our neighbor, who was his hunting companion, did get a cow and is sharing the meat. Terrific, as this was a big part of Mark's decision to hunt again. Mark helped with the cleaning, etc., I think this qualifies as the icky part.

Last lunch at Ryce today after picking up my seasonal ski equipment rental in Gunnison. Gotta do it now and it's super cheap to rent for the whole season. Still hard to imagine since there's no snow on the mountain at the moment, but it's coming. Crested Butte has gone very quiet, and finally all that blue from the "Whatever" promo has removed off the main road (diamond milled - serious stuff).

And about the moment I was congratulating myself that we were leaving the barrage of dreadful non-stop political tv commercials and phone calls, I was reminded that apparently we're going to a state that has equally obnoxious political races going on. Oh, well.

No big list of books read as I'm still on the repeat of the Outlander series. Deep into book 4, Dragonfly in Amber. These are really long books folks!