BURRRR! AND A WONDERFUL LAZY SUNDAY!

SUNDAY, JAN. 5th-On days when it is cold and the high will only get into the 40's we sort of hibernate. Yes, I said in the 40's! We aren't from Maryland anymore! We are what the northern folks call "lizard people". Living in the sunbelt for several winters, we want no parts of anything that is below 55 degrees!

On these lazy days when not much is happening, I try to put pictures up from our past. Our friend's Chuck and Annie who we spent New Year's Day with are pictured here on the left. Of course there is Ralph and I, then Marilyn, Dennis, Rachael and Buck. We went to a country dance during the Christmas holiday in 2010.

Every couple of  years while "wintering" in the San Antonio area, we take a trip to downtown San Antonio and visit the Alamo. The battle started on February 23, 1836 and ended on March 6, 1836.A couple hundred Texians defenders held off a few thousand Mexican troops of General Santa Anna's Army during the 13 day siege.

Me visiting a Alpaca and Llama farm in Cheyenne, Wyoming in Sept. 2007

Here is Ralph with a couple of "Floosies". We were visiting Cody, WY. and they had cowboy reenactor's performing gunfights. We got to see Buffalo Bill Cody, Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane shoot it out with bad guys.

Here we are in Yellowstone National Park in Sept. 2007. We rode our bikes around the park looking for "downed trees". The park would allow you to cut anything that was down for firewood. We would put the pieces of wood in our bicycle basket and haul it back to our campsite.

We decided to cook steaks outside on the grill. Just as we pulled our steaks off the grill, a fast and furious snow fell. Luckily it only lasted 15 minutes!

A beautiful majestic buffalo and Old Faithful.

Funny story here.....Ralph and I thought it would be fun to get up early and walked to the Madison River in Yellowstone NP to watch the sun come up and listen to the Elk "bugle" off in the distance. So we did just that. We set our alarm not knowing the time of the sunrise that morning. At the time we did not have heavy winter coats, after all we thought we would never need them ever again. Well that morning we did!

We left the RV and walked about a mile to the Madison River. We had our coffee thermos, tripod and camera equipment. There we stood in the dark shivering waiting for the sun to come up. We had arrived way early and it was close to an hour before the sun made its appearance. What was really neat was while we were waiting, we heard the constant bugling of the Elk and as time went on they were getting closer and closer to us. That made the hair on the back of our neck rise a bit but we never did see them.

When we got back to the RV we put on the news. There was Al Roker telling everyone, "Last night the coldest place in the U.S. was in Yellowstone National Park". We had a good laugh over that
as we were thawing out.

We visited the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone. The animals are unable to live in the wild for different reasons. Many were orphaned and others were labeled "nuisance bears" because they were becoming dangerously comfortable around humans. They were given a second chance and relocated to the Discovery Center. The park rangers tell us that "A Fed Bear is a Dead Bear". Once humans start feeding them, they become use to that and no longer fear humans. Usually they are killed. Thank goodness for the Discovery Center.

One of the rangers gave a nice talk on birds of prey. All the birds here can no longer live in the wild. They were brought here because of injury or abandonment.

What a nice way to cap off our fun day.