Snow!!

  Now that winter is practically over, I finally got a day in the snow. I missed the big storm a few weeks ago, but got up to the Boston area just in time for a snowy hike last Monday, before rain and warm weather melted it all. This is at Blue Hills Reservation, about 20 minutes from my parents house. Back when Chewie and I were both younger, we used to hike here at least once week. This particular trail is fairly easy, with very little gain in elevation, and only about a mile from the parking lot is this small pond, really just a big puddle, but its pretty.

A rare picture of me! With Chewie and Panzer.

Chewie is getting old, he'll be 13 next month, and definitely got tired out by the snow. Panzer, whose name suits him very well, just plowed right through it and still had plenty of energy when we were done.

SNOW!!!

  We do occasionally get snow here in Virginia Beach, only once or twice a year, and usually only a few inches (in six years the most snow I've seen on the ground here was 6", and it shut down the city for a week). A couple weekends ago we got our first, and possibly only snowfall this winter. So I grabbed my camera and my dogs and headed down to MacKay Island NWR. The marsh looked beautiful with a dusting of snow.

  A great blue heron, normally they are quite skittish, but on the drive home I realized that for some reason they weren't as scared of the car as they were of me on foot. This one let observe him from only about 25 feet way and across a frozen creek, even seeming to parade around and pose for pictures.