We are still getting snow … now at least 6 inches of very heavy snow. Nina has been out to shake the snow out of the trees (and even so there are some broken branches). About 5 minutes before Conference was to start, she discovered that the Dish Satellite dishes were snow covered and we had no signal. I climbed up on top of the motor home so I could get a broom up to the satellite dishes and sweep out the snow. That has restored the signal (for now). We’ve also had one short power outage and there will likely be more as the snow is very heavy on the power lines and on the trees around the power lines. No more mice caught, though.

The rain switched to snow about 6 a.m. this morning and since then we’ve gotten about four inches of very wet, heavy snow. It looks to continue snowing for a while as well. The question of the hour is whether or not I go dig out the snow blower from the back of the garage or trust that this will melt quickly???? For some reason the weather bug says a high of 43 today and a high of 59 tomorrow, getting up to 67 by Wednesday. I think I’ll wait on the snowblower.

Nina doesn’t scream very often. When she does, it’s usually a critter of some sort. Last night it was a brace of mice. Somehow they had taken up residence in the house while we were gone (that’s an entrance I’ll need to find and seal). I brought in a trap from the garage, set it, turned away, and “bang”, one of the mice was now dead. I reset the trap and another one bit the dust overnight. Where there’s two mice there are probably a dozen, so I’m now a trapper for the next while.  My cold is still hanging in there and won’t go away. Maybe I should just go back to bed!

We are back in Pocatello safely at home from the trip to the northwest. As a fitting end to the trip, it was raining when we got to the house. In fact, we are supposed to get between one and three inches of snow tonight! It did snow a week ago here while we were gone, but since we weren’t here, that snow doesn’t count. The drive from Baker City, Oregon to Pocatello was completely uneventful. The trip went well despite being down with a cold. It was very good to spend time with Jared and Arlene and to see Wendy, Kendra, and family. Our next trip will be south, into much warmer territory. But that won’t be for a few more weeks. We need to get some things done around the house!

There are occasionally signs that cause me to chuckle. This was one of them. The top sign was the name of the road: “Summit Road”. We were driving north on Highway 101 near Tillamook, Oregon (on the coast). To the right was a small set of hills, the tops of which would have been about 700 feet above sea level.

Just below it says: “No Outlet”. You can go up, but the only way out is to come back down this road.

Finally, the blue/white signs in the middle say that in case one needs to evacuate because of a tsunami, go up the “no outlet” “Summit Road” and then pray that there will be a road to come back down. I thought the sign combination was much funnier than my traveling companion thought….

I’ve put three sets of pictures in the Photo Album. One has some miscellaneous pictures from around Seattle, another has some pictures from a couple of days of sightseeing around Seattle and visiting with family, and the last has some pictures from our whale-watching cruise. Enjoy!

Nina just came back from the laundry so we’ve now clean stuff for the rest of the trip. A little earlier we trimmed a day off our time here in this campground. Nothing against the RV Beach Resort in Cannon Beach, Oregon! It’s just that the forecast is for rain the rest of the week. That’s a bit too much rain for us and we’re headed inland where there will be much less rain. We had a pretty good weather week last week and it was too much to ask for this week to be equally as good.

I’m starting to feel a bit better (as long as I keep taking the drugs every three hours). Hopefully this cold will be brief and stay up top. Today amidst all of the raindrops, we drove north to Astoria, across a classic bridge into Washington, and up along the seashore. I should rather say amidst the torrents of rain. We stopped at Desperation Point State Park where I walked out to one of the lighthouses to try and get a picture. The wind must have been blowing 50 mph or better with rain just pelting down. I did take a few pictures, but the weather didn’t not help. I was quite soaked when I got back to the car. We had lunch at a restaurant in downtown Astoria where we both had a bowl of delightful clam chowder. Now that the laundry is done, it’s only about 6:30 p.m. at night, and we’ll need to figure out what else to do with the evening. There must be something around worth doing!