Colder Boxing Day

A bitter cold has
settled over us, so I
will keep close to home

~ carliewired

I was up wandering the house at 3 AM. At 6 I decided to make coffee and roast the small ham I had. By 8 it was obvious that there would be no sunrise worth mentioning, so I took myself off to bed again. I slept until just past noon. 

At that point I could see the smallest traces of blue over my mountains. I went out to scrape off the last addition of snow on the driveway. I headed across the bridge and up the hill to the Columbia Street Lookout. 

It was a calm -20 C and I knew I'd need to make short work of my photos. I looked out over the North Thompson Valley. The river is frozen along the edges and dusted with the snow of Christmas Day. The sun was feeble but appreciated all the same. My mountains looked lovely against the blue sky. A tree near the lookout held a large number of magpies. I think of them as rascals and bandits, but today, I felt sorry for them. A family of four parked beside me and asked if I'd take a photo of them against the mountains with the mom's cell phone. It was all I could do to manage that with my frozen fingers. I wished them a happy new year and I was on my way home. 

I see I've missed some calls while I was out so I will catch up. I'm in and happily so. We are warned of frostbite on our weather network as the wind chill makes this day a -31 C. 

We might expect a high of -17 C and the possibility of some snow flurries. Looking forward, we hope to see some warmer days by the end of the week.