We found this down by the pond yesterday. From the amount, shape and size, I'm thinking black bear. From the contents, I'd say he's been visiting our bird feeder.

Scat is about 1-1/2" in diameter.

Guess we need to put the game camera back down there!

I think we may call both a big moose and a big elk "Big Boy". Or, maybe Lynne has a different name for the big elk we are now seeing on the game cameras. (Would love to see him in person!) Is this the same elk that we saw a couple of years ago with a large herd walking through our meadow?

Big Boy the elk at the salt lick.

Maybe the same elk from a few years ago?

We have all game camera shots that we think are worth keeping in one of our photo galleries. You can see it here, or link to it from the links on the right side of this page--just scroll down to "Photo Galleries". The most recent shots are on the second page, including three nice shots of Big Boy.

Yesterday morning was a bit magical. We had rain and a little bit of snow overnight. Not much, just enough to make the ground crunchy. As we sat drinking our coffee a big bank of fog rolled in and enveloped the cabin like a white fluffy cocoon. That good old Colorado sun came out and the fog bank retreated to linger along Bull Mountain.

It shifted and changed on our walk with the dogs. Fascinating.

When we returned from our walk the little aspen grove beside the cabin was glittering with drops of water from the melting snow. I soon became caught up in trying out different focuses and came up with some pretty cool photos of the sun through droplets of water. You may or may not agree, but here they are!

The clothesline.

I became fascintated by the prisms and how each droplet seemed to reflect a different spectrum.

As our winter preparation projects wind down and we move into winter, you are likely to see more food-oriented posts on the Off the Grid blog. Here is what we had for dinner last night:

This is a Pork Chile Verde (Green Chile Stew) recipe that you can find on the web site.

It is pretty easy to make with minimal ingredients. You just need about 4-5 hours to let it cook. Since it cooks at a low temperature, we decided to cook it in the oven of our wood burning stove.

The "old fashioned" wood burning stove.

The stove actually has a large oven. We've done a 13 pound turkey in there before!

Of course, keeping the oven at 225° means adding a stick of wood now and then. And, eventually, the cabin gets quite warm. We had the front door open by the time the stew was done.

I hope you share my fascination with cloud formations because otherwise this will be boring for you!

First photo was taken this morning on our way in to town to pick up the Ranger with its winter tracks. I love the con trail that looks like a zipper, and well, I think the clouds are pretty awesome too. I did not have my camera so I had to resort to using the camera on the iPad instead. No tweaking was done, these are straight off the iPad.

This was on the way home. We are almost home in this photo and the clouds were centered over our property.

The West never disappoints.