A Sliver of Blue

I love how just a sliver of blue sky takes us from

"I've got all morning" to "Are you ready yet?"!

All week long, forecasters were calling for snow this weekend, and when we got up Saturday morning, it definitely appeared that they were going to be correct. But once Dan got on the computer and saw that the radar showed that the first wave of snow had gone around us, he began pacing the house. Then a sliver of blue appeared between the cloud layers, and it was all over but the packing! 

Before long, we were on the road headed west. Dan wanted to check on a frozen "waterfall" on the Stillwater River outside of Nye. (If it looks familiar, you may remember it from  Skidding Around the Learning Curve.) It is there every winter and gone every summer, and every year, it is just a little bit different. 

All along the way to Nye, we were on high alert for eagles. Maybe it was the wind, but we arrived at our destination without ever getting an eagle in the viewfinder. We did spot two, but they were a long way off. 

The Stillwater Trail (or as I like to call it ~ the trail to Souix Charley Lake) is a favorite hike of ours. We took the cut-off trail above the gorge so that we could look down on the frozen falls. As Dan was photographing the falls, I noticed the pinecones. I switched to the macro lens and fed my obsession.

A little further down the trail, we came to a patch of melting snow on the rocks beside us. Drops of water were falling from the tips of the icicles and the blades of dead grass along the edges, and I thought once more of the macro lens. Dan waited patiently while I tried with varying degrees of success to catch the drips in pixels. 

When the cut-off trail rejoined the main trail, we decided to head back to the car, especially since we were starting to get hit with hard little pellets of snow. But all in all, we both agreed that we had had a lot more fun than we would have had sitting in the house all day. 

It's not big, but this waterfall is there all the time,
and it might just be my favorite spot on the river.

While these layers of smooth-as-glass ice
are pretty on the water in the river,
they occasionally form all the way across the trail.
THAT makes for interesting hiking.
Not my kind of adrenaline rush!