Firewood Cutting and DSL

We got up to a cool, cloudy morning, took a walk seeing lots of bear sign and bear paw prints. Michael has been groaning and moaning about how cold it is (it was 34 degrees this morning with a high of 56 this afternoon) so we decided to go up the East Boulder road about 12 miles past where we live and cut a load of firewood. We have a fireplace in our living room with glass doors and a wood burning stove downstairs in the basement, using both to supplement our electric heat. Firewood cutting up the East Boulder used to be an every winter event until the platinum mine started operations several years ago. It just stopped being as much fun when you had to dodge semi-trucks and buses. Now that the mine is in operation, the traffic is not as bad so off we went.

The scenery is spectacular and it smells so piney up there. We reached the end of the road on top about 10am and got home around 2pm with a nice load of firewood.

When we got home our new DSL modem/router was in the mailbox along with Aunt Margaret’s quilt tops for me to practice on.

I think I said in an earlier post that we were having extensive problems with our Hughes satellite internet service. We put Hughes on vacation until we are ready to travel south for the winter and hooked up DSL with our local telephone company. WOW--I am amazed at how much faster it is--when I loaded the photos for this blog post, it was so much faster than with Hughes. Yippee! And maybe no more getting kicked off every 30 minutes.

Jazz went with us to cut firewood and is one tired puppy--so many things to sniff, so many squirrels to chase.

One of the bear paw prints we saw in the mud this morning.

Another bear paw print.

Our morning's work!

Someone had a sense of humor. This pink flamingo was perched atop one of the snow stakes along the side of the road. Snow stakes mark the edge of the road for the snowplows--if they miss the edge of the road up there, it is a LONG way to the bottom!!