We got woke up a bit early this morning. Our deck roof on the back of the house fell down. It couldn't take all the pressure and weight of all that snow getting saturated with rain. I measured the snow on the roof of the house here is 15inches+ deep.





Luckily it fell when it did. An hour later and the dogs would have been doing their business in the back yard. Another bright side, we were trying to figure out how to take it down anyway.
View from bedroom where we watched from as it fall in slow motion.

Ok, I think I am done catching up on the blog... course lately it does seem like there is always something happening!

This is what our driveway looked like when Suzi went to work this morning.

Our nieghbor's horses Solo and Magnum, seem to be enjoying the snow.

Especially Solo.

Our street is looking better all the time. This was yesterday.

We got stuck in our driveway. Our roundabout is sloped, and when I was going around the circle I slid sideways. Suzi dug us out.

Took the dogs to the doggie walk at Marymoor again.


Saw these geese just walking playing follow the leader.

Spent christmas day making a trail from the garage to the driveway. The kitties got a taste of outside. It was scarry though, Little Loius all of a sudden bolted for the house, even jumping in the deep snow. As he reached the garage we heard the sound of a hawk. It was close. eek Thankfully Louis was alert!



Even the plows were hard at work on christmas. Today is Dec 29, and we still have single lane traffic on our road out front. By the way, the news guy said we have not seen snow like this since 1861! wow!

Merry xmas eve. We made it home tonight. Got more snow at home.


Roads were pretty good from Bellevue to Monroe. Then When we got to Old Owen road the police were diverting traffic from going up the hill. We decided to go the other way, but were concerned about the hill on Bollenbaugh. Sure enough the traffic was backed up on the steep hill with a corner. So we ventured on. Woods creek eventually comes to the other side of Bollenbaugh, but we could not remember what the hills were like going that way. Along the way there were a couple rigs in the ditch, then we had to stop while some guys pushed a car out of the way. Then we came to a spot where there were several stopped vehicles with people out of their rigs talking. 3 trucks ahead of us continued, so we did too. It was a fun hill, steep and long. We made it just fine, with the 4x4 and all the extra weight of the camper. It was kind of fun kind of like playing up in the mountains on the logging roads. Course I only say that because we made it without having to get out of the cab.

Went by Joes. This is the igloo they built on the concrete patio. Bear is in the photo for scale...

I put the blade on our little garden tractor, but the snow was too deep hard and icy for it. Suzi decided to attempt to dig us out by hand on Sunday. (Our driveway is approximately 1 football field length from the roundabout to the corner near the street.) Monday morning we had a long ways to go, and most of our effort was dashed by the wind re-plugging up the driveway. We could not tell where the driveway verses the ditch was, so we decided to mark the center of our driveway. We were 2/3 done with marking it when our neighbor from across the street came to the rescue on his cute little bobcat tractor.


He did find the ditch near the alders, but once he got past that point he saw how we had marked it and made quick work of the driveway.


It was about 3pm Monday by this time, and we decided it best to head to town. We were concerned that there was enough soft snow that our driveway could plug back up overnight.


We spent the night in Bellevue. Had a great city view out our dining window with our coffee and breakfast.



I took the dogs to the off leash doggie park at Marymoor while Suzi was at work. Saw a bunch of these snow geese while there. They really did blend in good with the snow.


Sam was really cute with this other pup. She was doing this sweet little whine the whole time. Normally she is scared and making herself small around other dogs...


Dogs have really settled into the new camper.

We got about 3 inches of new snow over the weekend. Just guessing, we did have enough wind to plug up our driveway. here is what the street in front of our house looked like Saturday.

Ok, evidently the big wind event was cancelled. However our huge maple tree in the back yard did not get the memo. About an hour later, one of them fell. One more to go.

The weather folks seem to think we are in for a major wind event later today, so we ventured to town for gas for the generator.

This shot is the bridge near Cromwell.

Here you can see the roads are better towards Monroe. This is the hill just after Albertson's. The tree on the wire fell about a week ago.

Evidently everyone else had the same idea. The 1st two gas stations were out of gas. The third one only had premium, so we got it there.

Louis and Natasha made the big escape today. Fortunately the deep snow made them stay close to the house. The carport and under the deck were the chosen spots.
This is Natasha's paw print:

This is Loius:

We got up this morning and it was really nice out! Blue skies, calm, lots of snow, and 10F.

It has been a tiring couple of days.

Earlier in the week we got a bit of snow up at our house the road was icy to Monroe. But it was really pretty out.



Then Wednesday morning we woke to 3 inches of fresh snow, so I took Suzi to work with the truck. Which happened to still have the new camper on it. One funny thing was since we moved the truck up by the RV pad, we had a couple of branches we had to prune due to the snow was weighing the branches down, blocking the camper height.
There was more snow forecast for that day. Schools throughout the Seattle area were closed for the day even... but... There really wasn't much more snow Wednesday night, after work, we thought about heading home. Until we heard on the radio there was a major accident on the road we take. So we thought well, the camper is on the truck, let's just spend the night. We woke to the white stuff near Crossroads in Bellevue where we slept.

The dogs thought it was GREAT!



We had to navigate the hills of Bellevue to get Suzi to work. It was kind of fun. The cranes in the background kept disappearing and reappearing with the heavy snowfall.



Here is the View from Suzi's desk




Suzi's boss was really happy she made it in. We decided to spend Thursday night in town also. The temp ranged from 14F to 29F during our adventure. The camper handled it well. We did have antifreeze in all the pipes no running water at these temps. We did use the toilet, but we tried to keep a 50/50 mix of liquids and antifreeze. (ok, maybe too much information)
We woke Friday Morning and noticed these cool icicles hanging from the camper. (which are larger now)



It was a beautiful day. Sunny and about 25F. Here is what the view from Suzi's desk was this morning.



Tonight(Friday night) after work we crawled our way home. it took us almost 2hrs. We were surprised to see less snow in Totem Lake, but once we passed Costco in Woodinville the roads seemed to get worse, but interestingly the drivers in Monroe did not bother me the way the drivers did in Bellevue. Maybe they just have more experience. The road was plowed all the way home, but the road seemed especially narrow and really could use another run from the plow. I doubt the Prius could make the trek to Monroe from home due to low clearance. Here is a shot of the fire hydrant at the end of our block.



Our driveway looked so pristine it was almost a crime to venture down it.



I rubbed my axel on the truck all the way down the driveway. We had some low branches from the weight of the snow, so Suzi got out of the truck and waded thru the snow to make sure we had enough clearance.
Ginger is displaying how deep the snow was.



We were all thrilled to be home.



It was a good trial run for the camper, our first camping trip... hmm... anyhow, we both agreed we slept as well in the camper as we would have had we been home! :)

Well, since we seem to like to make all of our large purchases in December, we decided to get a new to us truck camper. :) We found one, so now we need to sell our beloved 1970 Kit Kamper. I ran an add on Craigslist for it.
We woke up this morning to some white stuff. Kind of put a bounce in my step.

The camper we found a nice late model Adventurer 810ws. It will fit both a long bed truck and a short bed truck.
We needed to get it home. So we looked at the weather forcast, and it looked like the best time to pick up the was today, so we did.
We got home just as the snow was starting back up.

We had 4 groups of trumpeter swans fly over a couple of days ago.

Boy were they noisy!