4X4'ering up the mountain behind our home

    

Bill and Becky, who live across the street from us, have an assortment of toys that are quite useful up here in the mountains. Bill had mentioned to me that he was going to go check his game camera about one mile up the hill and I all but begged to accompany him, safer to go in two's right?

I can't really start a blog without a photo of birds? Caught this couple of Bald Eagles (they mate for life...unlike some of us) near their nest earlier in the day when I went into town. It is too early for any eggs otherwise there would be one sitting on the nest at all times.

Bill picked me up at my front door with his 4x4 quad. We headed past my house to the access road, just 100 yards past our property.

Doesn't take long before we are calf deep in virgin snow. 

Oh damn! We are blocked one mile from the top of Paradis Peak (correct spelling, I checked!) and I really wanted to see the view from the top.

Well... it helps to have friends in high places, who also have keys, ha ha

Bill works for the local power company and needs access to the relay system on top of the mountain, so he has the POWER to go the distance!

We got to the top of the mountain just as the sun was setting to the west. This tower relays phone and Internet to a mountain just east of Colville.

It's so cold and the snow was very deep but the view was "drop dead" beautiful on top.

Bill was pointing out all the areas that we were looking at from Paradis Peak. I can see my next purchase being a snowmobile suit...Bill looked warm. (maybe I'll get the limited edition "Duck Dynasty" snowmobile outfit...ha ha, na)

Pert' near dark as we head down to the house. I have a good jacket, gloves, Sorel's and snow pants...but my cheeks were painfully cold. Next time ( I'm hoping) I will wear my motorcycle mask which should solve my frozen cheek problems.

How do you not love a scene like this? Snow, outdoors, quads and a friendly neighbor giving me the tour, I'm only slightly sad that it took 65 years before we belonged to such a great community.

The reason we started this adventure is now realized, the taking down of the game camera. Bill said he will forward any unusual photos he captured with the camera. Bill also pointed out many of the fresh prints in the snow of the mountain inhabitants on our outing but the one I was most interested in were the recent moose prints we found.

I will end this blog with a photo from our neighbor Gene. We had visited the Myers yesterday and toured their beautiful home that has an even better view of the valley than ours. Gene also feeds the deer and at times says they will come right up to his window...begging, guess he wasn't kidding.