Animal tracks, magic water, and frosty breath

We are halfway through January with much of winter left - 2 and 1/2 months at minimum since I don't know if you can actually count April. It can be snowy but more likely its the muddy bog that sucks you, your car, and anything else you own into the nether region. I greatly prefer our brilliant sparkly white wonderland.

More cross country, snowshoeing for both of us, and a warm up downhill for Mark. You do have to get out there with these short days or you're going to have some saaddd days. I have it on good authority there are a number of people here who definitely have issues with the winter blues and they're generally not getting out. Hmm.

From right to left: squirrel, mouse or other, and not sure - something with low body mass?

No new mountain lion tracks happy to say but I'm on alert. I'm pretty sure it will come back having clearly had great success with the rabbit population for dinner. Instead we have tons of small to medium animals happily bustling around. They are not following in my tracks unlike previous years.

The live animals are harder to spot. The coyote was today and while there have been a number of bald eagle sightings this season, I have yet to grab a photo. This was from 2 years ago. They're all here just hiding except for Mr. and Mrs. Bear - snoozing the winter away.

My Magna Carta class is on the fence and about to fall over on the side of boring. A 75 year old professor droning on and on the grounds of Runnymede is not it. I'll give it another week. My other class is non-existent as it turns out. It let me sign up and it turns out it was for January of 2014. A fault of the Coursera web people along with, of course, a non observant me.

Magic underground mountain spring water

Now onto the cleaning of water containers. After using the humidifier in a fast and furious way while Mark was recovering from that nasty flu, it needed to be cleaned. Quite the procedure which included white vinegar and bleach. And the containers we use for gathering and storing our magic water, soap, bleach and soaking. All good now - no nasty bacteria.

This activity is currently on the banned list, courtesy of Ralph's accident last March. Danger here folks...

We are but a miniscule speck in the immense world which surrounds us. It's an everyday reminder here.