Haloranch

There's an old Chinese proverb that says, "The journey of 1,000 miles begins with one step." In our case, it's 10,000 miles and a car. We leave Saturday morning for Thailand and no, we're not actually driving there. But we are driving to Seattle to catch the plane, so we're taking 2 days to get there and the opportunity to visit friends along the way. Perfect start to a great trip!

Drifts. The word sounds so soft, doesn't it? Snowy drifts. Don't you just picture a huge fluffy pile of snow that floats and settles around you like so many downy feathers were you to jump into it? That would be a mistake. The winds sculpted these drifts, turning our driveway into a wannabe glacier. Hans tackled it with our heavy duty snowblower but at first bite it balked and refused to go further. You can see why. Heavy winds built the snow up over 15 hours until it was packed knee deep in spots and nearly as solid cement. This photo was taken the next morning, January 11th, at about 8:30 when the winds had mercifully stopped. Two hours later Hans had a path cleared and drove me to the road so I could get to work. Then he worked another 1 1/2 hours with the snowblower. Wednesday when we were housebound wasn't all bad though. We knew we weren't going anywhere so we alternately sat before a blazing fire or in the hot tub, watching the snow fly past the window.