Winter Is Coming

The weather for the last week here has definitely reminded us that winter is just around the corner. One morning, I was totally unprepared for the fact that I had to actually scrape some ice off my car on my way to work. I leave for work at 5:30AM, so it's dark out at that hour and the temperature was cool enough for the dew to freeze on my windows. Fortunately, since I live in Colorado I keep the ice scraper in the car 365 days a year (you just never know) so I only had to fetch it out of the trunk.

My dad asked me to go with him on Friday to get some firewood in preparation of winter. I have this nasty habit of agreeing to do things without thinking about them, so I naturally said yes immediately. Our neighbors have property up in the mountains and since the pine beetle infestation has killed off a lot of their trees, they don't mind us going up and taking some firewood each year. There's a wood stove insert in the fireplace in the living room, so when the temperatures drop my dad likes to have a fire going because it drops the heating bill dramatically.

Snow-capped peaks around Berthoud Pass

So I got up early on my day off and we headed off for the two hour drive to our neighbor's property. There were still some fall colors on the trees, but about half of the trees had dropped all or most of their leaves. Going over the mountain pass, it was clear that it had recently snowed as the pine trees were dusted in snow as well as the peaks. We had decided to bring the dogs along so that they could run around on the property while we worked. On the way up, they had the whole bed of the truck to themselves because my dad has a topper on his truck. The ride home was going to be less cozy as the back would be full of wood, so they would ride inside the cab with us.

When we arrived, my dad set out to getting his chainsaw started up (which did not go well initially) and then he started cutting up a downed tree. My job was loading the cut up tree into the back of the truck so that we could drive up to the garage where they had a hydraulic log splitter. If you've never tried to manually split wood, let me tell you, the hydraulic splitter is a fantastic tool. It seriously saved some time and labor on the wood splitting.

Lots of exploring was done

 The dogs got to run around the yard. My dad's dog Danger had a rope tied to his harness because he is mostly well behaved, but has a habit of getting far away from us at the dog park and pretending not to hear us. He brought a rope for Jonesy as well, but he stayed close to us and I never have to call him twice if he does start to wander off. The large land area around their cabin was fenced, but the dogs could've easily gotten out if we got busy and weren't paying attention.

Dad at work

A squirrel sat high up in one of the live trees and dropped pine cones down on the dogs until Jonesy realized what was happening and chased it off. The squirrel was not happy and was probably never faced with dogs there before. I think the dogs ended up thoroughly enjoying their time away from the city. Us humans, however ended up with sore muscles from our hard work, but it will pay off when

the cold temperatures come and the heating bills don't go up.

Look at that smile

By the end of the day, we had managed to cut up nearly two trees and had the back of my dad's truck filled up to the roof of the topper. The dogs were tired and had to be somewhat crammed into the back of the truck. Fortunately, the ride home wasn't too bad because Friday traffic can be a nightmare, but it only took a little longer than the ride up. Probably the worst thing was coming home to stack up the wood in the backyard after sitting in the truck and having muscles stiffen up. My dad appreciated my help though because it would've taken him twice as long to do it all himself and I got a free lunch out of it.

Don't they look cozy?