We were surprised at how long it took for the 8 inches of snow that we got to fully melt away. Surprised but not disappointed. Snow that doesn’t hinder travel or other enjoyments but just lays there looking pretty and clean is rarely unwelcomed in our book.
We took a drive over to the Wetlands Management Area to see how things were going.
It was neat being the first to make tracks and yes, that is actually the road.
Darlene did a great job of staying on the road too. She only slid toward the ditch a few times but with Renee and Nicole in the car it was more whooping, laughing and asking for more than it was worries and screams.
We were the first auto tracks in the snow but there were plenty of others to see.
Kangaroo Rat
Mouse with no tail?
Beaver
Hmmmm?
OH, Coyote!
We also saw deer, rabbit, bird and other tracks that we didn’t take photos of. Fresh, undisturbed snow is great for preserving tracks. That is until the sun comes out!
The ponds had iced over with all of the recent cold and were birdie ghost towns.
It was cold.
I’m serious!
I look serious, right?!
This Red Tail Hawk was pretty excited about all of the scurrying. The white backdrop must have made for easy spotting.
Do you think we had a lot of tiny visitors to the feeders? It would be hard to identify only one print in that conglomeration.
As things began to warm up we prepared for a long goodbye to our short white winter.
A trip to the grasslands a few days later revealed Black Butte to be temporarily White.
We were there to assist with a wolf capture and it was a particularly cold day. Probably the coldest we’ve had. Pretty sure it made the wolves a bit spunkier!
Cold or not, we were happy to see our favorite area under this beautiful white blanket.
This was the last of the desert white that we’ll see this time around. We knew that we had not wanted to fully escape to warmer temperatures this year which is why we picked this area. What we didn’t know though was just how much winter white we’d get to experience, as well. So, we fishtailed and slid our way home on the slick refuge roads and let it all sink in.