Breaking trail for the Monkey

Bobcat at 3 o'clock checking us out as we passed by on the road. Bob was patiently waiting to hunt for dinner, but stopped, turned and sat to see if the dog across the street was going to come chase him off (he didn't).

With the lack of new snow and warm weather (Sunday had a high of 47 in Ned...not cool) I skipped skiing for the weekend and did a couple snowshoe hikes instead. Large news that will be somewhat life-changing for us: it looks like we may be moving down the road and that we'll be rescuing a couple of horses that have had less-than-ideal lives (to put it lightly) up to now. More on that later. For now, some pictures of the hikes.

The Monkey waited as I broke trail with the snowshoes and shovel (shovel, shovel, step, step - in true Rocky Balboa training style - yes, I'm worked today). The Monkey is the adventurer in the pack. She could be out all day and it wouldn't be enough. Kinda like me! She's 11 now, so I'm trying to spoil her as much as possible. In the above picture, I'm making her wait while I pack the trail down so she doesn't hurt herself trying to post hole through the 3ft deep unconsolidated (before I got to it) snow. She loves the out-back hikes much more than the yard, and so do I, so it's worth the extra effort. Today it paid off as we had a sweet packed down trail to hike with Basie.

The Monkey looks for lions off B-day rock.

Today I took the dynamic duo for the lollipop loop out back. The trail was nice and packed from my effort yesterday so it was easy going. Not a soul in sight, but these guys definitely smelled something. There were elk tracks and scat everywhere so I imagine that's what they're looking for. Monkey and Basie NEVER look at the camera.