"An Old Man Loved is Winter with Flowers" Part 1.

This was a trip to Susanville, Calif.  for my Uncle's 90th birthday party and it was worth every moment. We were heading to our Uncle's territory, in the high desert of the northern Sierra Nevada Mountains, to a well deserved party in his honor.
My sister and my cousin Suzi met us on the highway. The Prospector drove me down to Lodi and we loaded my things into my sister's car. I drove north on Highway 5 to Chico and Sis drove into the mountains to Chester. The forecast was for light snow. We brought chains but never needed them.

We played a little....

 We worried about the snow, which never got too heavy and made the trip from Chico to Chester a Winter Wonderland of a drive...

This is Deer Creek on highway 32. It was stunningly beautiful. It was also very cold.

We finally reached Chester and Lake Almanor which was covered with ice and snow around its edges. What a beautiful photo shoot this was.
About an hour later we drove over Fredonyer Pass and into Susanville, CA. (elevation 4200 ft.) on the east side of  Lassen National Forest.  about 85 miles north west of Reno, Nevada.
We had reached our destination.
*************
The Roseberry House Bed & Breakfast was waiting for our arrival. 

The innkeepers, Richard & Charmy Sorem, greeted us with such warm hospitality that we felt like we were members of their own family.
Then we went upstairs to our room.....

 Sis and I had the queen bed and Suzi had a charming single in the "alcove".
No one else was staying in the house so we had the whole upstairs to ourselves. My sister and I spent one miserable night sleeping together in the beautiful antique bed and the next night Sis chose to take another room across the hall. It was a joint decision. The rest of our stay was much more comfortable.
I had no idea that my sister talks in her sleep and hogs all the blankets. Tellin' on you sis!! I love ya but we can't sleep together, can we?
*******************
The next morning we woke up to snow falling softly all over town and  came downstairs to one of the most amazing breakfasts ever, cooked by Richard, and served in the wonderful old dining room.

This was a luxury I'm unaccustomed to. It was a most elegant and filling breakfast.  My cousin, Suzi, having just returned from Ireland, was very impressed with the variety of food. She had seen a lot of meals prepared and served in the last few weeks and this one rivaled them all.
After breakfast Sis and Suzi went for a long walk. I stayed in and read my book. Took a nap. The oldster was tired. I wasn't about to go for a walk in the snow.
I got a call from my cousins, in Ashland, Oregon, wondering about the weather and asking which pass we took through the mountains.... checking to see if we had arrived. They were raised in this town. They had no fear and seemed to take all the late snow rather matter of fact. 
Sis and Suzi came back from their walk in the snow with stories of what Susanville calls ".... just down the road." and decided to take the car next time if they needed something on the other end of town. It was their turn to take a nap.
Tomorrow I will continue... with a little history of  Susanville, a walk downtown and getting ready for the Birthday party.

It's One of Those days.... again.

I have no "purpose" today, but there's some consolation in the fact that Shakespeare might have had the same problem if he had been blogging.
So I will kind of do a collage of things for you, starting with a bit of guilt at complaints about the weather. It's foggy and cold today. REALLY FOGGY AND COLD....

The sun tried to shine and did for a while yesterday. The fog backed away and we had sunshine even though it was very cold.

and then, in the afternoon, it came back with the wind and settled into the river canyon for good.

This morning the thermometer read:

And it froze last night, breaking the hose that goes to the goat house for water.  But, it's OK, because then I get pictures from my friend Dawn, the "charming baglady", who lives in Michigan and I feel like a whiny baby for complaining about a 36 degree high and the 28 degree low.
Dawn talks about blizzards, wind chill factors, lake effect snow, loss of electricity and how she can't get to the store for days on end. She says that they do come and remove the snow from the street but it piles up at the edge of the driveway and freezes into ice that can't be driven over so if they are home.... they are stuck.
This is the view from her house. She loves the Michigan winters. She's always been tough.
This is her street and that is her neighbor's house in the distance.

And this is Mugs, her dog, after a romp outside....

Isn't that the cutest dog with snow on face. Wanna kiss?
Anyway, I know that I live in California and part of me is glad that I do. I don't live were it's always below 0 in the winter. I know I'm complaining about nothing compared to other places in the world but .... I'm sorry. It's cold for the California Foothills above Sacramento.  There.... I said it. I'm a wimp. An old wimp. If the rain and the cold would get together and snow for a day then I might be so delighted that I wouldn't feel like this... like Brownie, but it hasn't and, well..... Brownie isn't even talking about it today. Maybe he will have something to say tomorrow.
So, I feel like Seinfeld today. I have a Blog and I really don't have a lot to say, but I'm finding things to talk about the longer I sit in front of this computer. Maybe that's what Shakespeare did. Sat at his desk and dipped his pen in the ink well long enough that he finally came up with "a rose by any another name.." and " How sharper than a serpent's tooth...." etc. Genius is just hiding under this pile of notes on top of my desk. It's going to happen any moment now.....
Maybe not...
 
When I was at my sister's house during Christmas they were feeding the birds in their front yard. Sis, her son Ben and I watched the little Chickadees and Sparrows eating the birdseed from the livingroom window and I was taking pictures.
You know how they say that Opportunity knocks? Well, I have photographic evidence that, even in nature, there are opportunist. This rat was on that birdseed. He was darting in and out of the Star Jasmine grabbing all the seed he could get. 

Now I don't know how you feel about Rats. I have fairly good feelings about them. I don't want one in bed with me or biting me but I think they are very interesting creatures. My Dad use to talk about the huge river rats up on the Russian River when he was young. He said one crawled into his sleeping bag one night and, luckily, didn't bite him but he never slept outside again that I can remember. 
We had a white pet Rat in our 6th grade classroom in Pine Grove school when I was working for a living and he was the cutest little guy (rat) I had ever seen. He would wait for the kids to come and play with him. He would sit on their shoulders and laps. He was part of the classroom. He was cool.
So I don't get all hysterical when I see a rat and it appears that birds don't either. My sister pointed out that they all seemed to be OK with the rat taking some of the seed. She said that she wished all beings could live in harmony like this... sharing and coexisting together. And in a perfect world... she's right. It would be wonderful. I agreed, but I think it had more to do with the size of their brains   and the fact that there was a lot of birdseed to go around. 
In other parts of the world it's more like this....

...and that's just scary.

Wordless Wednesday:Snow Daze

A Magic Friday Morning

On Friday morning we woke up to heavy rain and it was very cold. It got darker and darker outside until we had to turn on the lights inside the house. The lights flickered a few times and went out, but came back on right away. We turned on the local radio to see what was going on. It seems the whole county was having a really bad day.
You see, when we get ice or snow below the 2000 ft. level, the whole county shuts down. We Californians are kind of use to sunshine ( I'm sure you've seen the ads for MILK and the "happy California Cows" who run from clouds and speak with french accents.) A little ice on the roads can send us into a panic and SNOW is ,well..., a major event.
The radio was telling us that school was closed because the buses couldn't get "up country" to pick up children and all the major highways were closed because of accidents. They said that it was SNOWING in town and no one should drive around if they didn't have to.
I was expecting a friend, from Sacramento, to arrive for the weekend. I called her, but got no answer. I left a message saying that the weather was so bad she probably shouldn't drive up here. I was feeling very disappointed about this when I looked out the window and saw that it had started to SNOW.
Grabbing my trusty Nikon, I threw on a coat and went outside. This is what it looked like. Now, I don't want all of you folks back in the mid-west and east to laugh , but these pictures of snow, here, in the California foothills, are a BIG DEAL.

You need to understand, first, that I love SNOW. I have always loved SNOW and every winter for the past few years I have been down in the Bay Area when it snowed here. I have missed two or three "snow storms" because I was gone and the prospector would take pictures for me so I wouldn't feel so bad. So, this year I was here..., and it was wonderful.

Look at this! Isn't it just the loveliest frozen stuff you ever saw. (click on pictures for larger view) It makes everything so beautiful and tells you that it's Winter. This is what Winter should be like. Not dry , lifeless and dull. Not brown and warm. Winter should be cold enough to take your breath away when you walk out the door. It should show you who's boss and remind you that life needs to go dormant before it can bloom again. Winter should sparkle, and on Friday morning it did just that.

Two hours later most of the snow was gone. My friend arrived before lunch and said she had no trouble driving up here. She said that she saw some snow but no accidents and that there was more snow in some of the small towns she drove through than here. I'm so glad that she got here.
Well, I'm sure the children of this county didn't mind one bit that school was canceled. In our typical over-reaction to bad weather here, we probably gave a few folks an extra day off from their jobs and that's not a bad thing. If this rainy, windy, lots of snow in the mountains February keeps dumping on us for a while, the reservoirs will fill up and we won't have to ration water next summer. Maybe there will be less fires around the state. This would be what Martha Stewart calls A GOOD THING.