The Canine Kiss

Today is Valentine's Day. For me, dogs represent love. My dogs shower me and each other in love every single day. So, the single image that sums up canine Valentine's Day for me is the piece done by artist Harriet Peck Taylor of K and R. It whimsically depicts an actual event, when R spontaneously gave his sister a kiss during a snowy hike.

Happy Valentine's Day to all of you!

My day was glorious. The clouds and sun painted the skies gorgeously, and the wind was almost still.

To my utter surprise, I was able to snow bike on the trails this morning. I started on the trails behind my house with my chocolate Valentine, K, next to me.

She led the way as I floated in a state of grace atop the snow crust.

And, she agreed to pose at point where we can see the beautiful mountains.

After pedaling and playing with K, I headed out for a solo snow bike ride, going to a network of snowshoe trails that are heavily used on weekends but empty on weekdays, hoping to find decent snow bike conditions. I pedaled west with snowy mountains as my beacon.

When I reached the end of the road, I followed a completely deserted snow shoe trail, and the conditions were spectacular. I flew along on the hard packed snow, back in the forest rather than on the roads where I've been riding for close to a week.

I rode through corridors of pine trees.

I pedaled through groves of thin aspen trees.

It was the best snowbiking that I've done in a very long time. I wanted to stay longer but I had to hurry home to meet our internet service person who I hoped would speed up our slothfully slow connection. He did find one big problem - a squirrel had chewed halfway through a wire going from the antenna into our house. As soon as he replaced the wire, our speed doubled. It's still not fast due to an overloaded radio tower that we rely on. But, it's better than before!

Finally, the sun set on a wonderful day...