Our house - Step One

The stucco on our house is being repaired, reinforced, and repainted.  First step was to put scaffolding all around the house.  Second step was to cover half the house in plastic.  Stay tuned to see the next step.

Crane Festival - Monte Vista, CO

These photos were all taken at the Crane Festival - Sandhill cranes.  They are very cool birds that stand about 4' tall.  Twenty thousand of them are migrating through the valley and we'll miss them when they are gone.  They often fly right over our house.

Looks like sunset but this photo was taken at sunrise.

I took hundreds of photos and this is my favorite.  I played with it in Photoshop but don't remember what I did.

An eagle sent these sandhills flying.

A closer view.

Sandhills and sunrise.

Two photos Photoshopped together.

Two more photos Photoshopped together.

There are quite a few Canadian geese and a few pintail ducks around, too.

One of the stops we made on the bus tour.  The little dot in the tree in the background is a hawk.

A closer view of the hawk.

An owl winking at me.

A tree looking at me.

Another sunrise photo.

Two photos Photoshopped together.

That's all for now.

Weird icicles

The icicles around here grow in very odd directions like straight out.   We saw icicles pointing up to the sky on a house but didn't have the camera with us so you will have to take our word for it.

These icicles are hanging from the snow hanging from our roof.

A zoomed out photo showing a horizontal icicle.

Sandhill Cranes and Snowy Trees

The Valley is now being visited by thousands of sandhill cranes and we found a few on the way home from the dunes.  The cranes visit for several weeks every year and fly over our house twice a day.  They are very cool birds and will be missed when they leave.

We also photographed some snowy trees on the way home.

I especially like this photo that Galen took.  The trees growing on the side of the mountain make a cool background for it.

Great Sand Dunes - Snow Covered

Roads around home were fine so we decided to drive out and get photos of the Great Sand Dunes covered with snow.  It turned into an adventure because the roads got more and more snow covered the closer we got to the dunes - snowy enough so snow plows were out clearing them.

Mountain tops

Took these three photos of mountain tops from Jen's place.

This photo was taken on the first seriously snowy day we've had since we got here.  The cabin is abandoned and the mountains behind it are invisible.

Chicken Coop

This is the before photo of the chicken coop that will be built in that empty corner all the way in the back on the right.  We park our truck in the front part of the barn because we can't squeeze past the truck and get out of the garage when the truck is parked in it.