Welcome 2013!

There's nothing like seizing the first day of the year, getting out early to see sunrise. We almost made it... the sun was just above the horizon when we arrived.

K had her favorite places to hang out at sunrise, and Shyla has different ones. She loves this boulder. In contrast, when she visits K's boulder (the one in the blog banner photo), she looks uncomfortable. Every dog is different.

The sun only shined from below the cloud cover for about 10 minutes, and we reveled in its glow.

The air was chilling, down around 10°F with a light wind. Shyla soon showed me that a paw was getting cold by holding it in the air. We practiced some long distance recalls to warm her up. It works every time!

After we lost the sun behind that cloud cover, we hiked to a faraway trail camera that was almost snowed in. It was pointed at a bear day bed which was heavily used last fall and early winter. Moreover, when I first pointed a trail camera at it in September, there was a fresh bear scat next to the bed - so it looked like a very promising spot. However, to my dismay, over the past 4 months, a squirrel visited the bear day bed approximately 4000 times and a single bobcat dropped by for 10 seconds. That was it. Oh well, you win some and you lose some in the trail camera game.

The day bed is under the canopy of the tree behind the bobcat. I was hoping so fervently to get some bear photos here. But, there's hope for bear photos because I get to make my annual visit to the bear den soon, and I'll find out if a bear chose it for this winter. I'll also check the trail camera that is posted there year around to see how many bears visited it this year. It's usually a popular spot for bear visits.

After our long cold hike this morning, my girl was ready to snooze when we arrived home.

Happy New Year!