It's been a good couple of days for viewing wildlife. I think we are all glad that hunting season in the high country has come to an end. Yay, no more orange!

The pronghorn antelope herd that has been living just over the hill from us is pictured above, obviously before our last snowfall. We never know when we are going to come across them. There are about 30 of them as near as we can count. 

On Thursday when we got up it was still snowing with about three inches on the ground already. When I pulled open the curtains and looked outside, there was a big black moose standing just inside of the Ewok Forest at the edge of the meadow. At first I thought it was the big black cow that was hanging around so much throughout the summer. Then it started to walk into the meadow and HELLO — it was Big Boy honoring us with a visit, not the cow moose I had orignally thought. It was truly hard to photograph him because the camera kept focusing on the snow coming down! Look at those paddles! We keep hoping he sheds them somewhere where we can find them. In fact, we are thinking of buying a kit that teaches a dog how to find and bring back antlers. Destin has such a great nose that we think it would be fun for him. Good luck and haha, right?

We were glad the dogs had already had their out pretty early on because Big Boy decided our meadow was a good place for an early morning nap. Photos just don't do him jusctice. He is HUGE.

Here he is when he first laid down and then a little later on. Funny how the snow seems to fall in a blanket on his back instead of covering him all over.

Big Boy you are welcome any time!

As far as our feathered friends are concerned, we've had some sightings there as well. Going in to town we sometimes see eagles, both bald and golden and lots of different hawks. We have missed several great photo opportunities lately, one being two mature bald eagles sitting together on a rise. No cameras! So now every time we go into town we both have our cameras with telephotos lenses at the ready. We went one week without seeing any big birds at all, which we chalked up to having our cameras with us every time.

Wednesday we had to go in to get eBay's food from the vet and we got lucky a few times.

We are pretty sure this is an immature bald eagle because of the mottling of the underside of the wings.

A little further on we came across this golden eagle sitting on the post of a cattle guard. Pretty head!

On the way back from town we took a different route since we had also gone to the feed store to get a couple of bales of hay to put out for the deer and elk. There is an eagle's nest in a big cottonwood tree and we see the pair of golden eagles that live there once in a while. 

This time instead of seeing the eagles by the tree we found this hawk (unsure of identification) sitting in the cottonwood. Hawks came be so hard to identify. My best guess is a ferruginous hawk. He blends in well!

And finally, a golden eagle just down the road.

Sitty pretty.

Lift-off!

Stupid pole, but you can see the huge wingspan.

We never know what we are going to see either here at home or on the road!

As Lynne mentioned in her previous post, we need to learn "snow management" for the winter. While we've been up here many times in the winter, it was either snowed in or blown dry. We have not had the opportunity to experience the full life-cycle of a snow storm. So, we were not sure where the snow would melt, would drift, would turn to ice, etc. After this last storm with about 5" of snow, and the fact we did nothing to manage it, we now have a better idea. 

One snow management task is to brush the snow off the solar panels. One set is on the ground and easy to reach. The other set is on the roof and requires a ladder. In both cases a 15' extension broom is essential. Lynne is not happy about the idea of leaving the ladder set up all winter, but I don't necessarilly want to be putting it up and down for every storm.

I was once counseled by a wise man who had lived up here many years. His counsel was to "leave the snow alone until you absolutely have to move it". He had the same philosophy on dead trees. That is what I decided to do this time. That might have worked for him in his location where he got lots of sun and wind. But, our driveway is sheltered from wind and sun by trees. So, I am probably not going to follow that advice next time.

Instead, I think we will have a list of snow chores to do at the end of each storm:

• Verify generator airflow is not blocked
• Verify propane system vent is not covered at the regulator
• Clear off decks
• Clear off solar panels
• Run snow blower on driveway
• Use snowshoes to pack down trail for dog duties
• Take a drive in the Ranger

It is supposed to snow again today and tomorrow, and again several times over the coming weeks. We'll see how that goes.

Of course, this is only snow management at the cabin site. We'll also need to learn to manage getting in and out of Sand Creek Park, which will mean managing the snow on the roads. Chains, jacks, tow ropes, shovels...can't wait.

WARNING! PHOTO DENSE POST!

It snowed all day on Thursday amounting to about 5 inches of fresh snow, which is just what they predicted. It came down without wind (thank god) and pretty much stuck to everything. It wasn't the world's prettiest snow to watch falling—the flakes were tiny, but dense. We stayed cozy inside with a fire going all day with the coldest daytime temperature yet: 23 degrees and 10 degrees overnight.

Friday morning dawned clear and beautiful. We decided to take the Ranger for its maiden drive with the tracks up Hidden Meadows Lane. Here are some photos from the drive.

From on the top looking back down the valley towards Laramie.

The Ranger is all its glory!

On the way back down the wind had already covered our tracks in quite a few places, just in the space of ten minutes or so. 

The trees you see in the "V" formed by the valley is our land on both sides of the road. We call that part of the land the deep dark woods. Pretty, yes?

Snow covered hill with what's left of the SuperMoon.

Wind-whipped snow!

The Deep Dark Woods.

Even though the wind had picked up we bundled up and took the dogs for a nice walk. The road had blown pretty much clear of snow so it made it easy for Hailey. 

However, Destin and Bella cared not whether or not the road was clear. They would rather play in the deeper snow.

Bella likes to stick her head in the snow and comes up looking like this!

Jack-rabbit Destin! He can move in the snow.

And last but not least, Destin finally standing still and looking very handsome just a few days shy of his 8-month birthday. Love this boy!

The only regret about the snowfall is that we made the decision not to blow the snow from our driveway. We knew it was going to be warmer for the next couple of days, but it wasn't enough. So ... now we have a layer of ice and it's due to snow again several times over the next week, but not large amounts. Still, we could have should have would have, right?

As you can see from Lynne's previous post, we are expecting a change in the weather. Thursday's high temperatures will be in the 20s and it will get down to around 10 degrees at night. That is a bit different from the daytime 50s and nightime 30s we've been having. Today is bright and sunny, in the 50s already (10:00 a.m.), and a bit breezy. It is also supposed to accumulate snow, and I think we are ready.

Since I'm sure the ponds I like to fish will freeze up, I went fishing yesterday to see if I could make a last nice catch of the season. And, I caught one nice rainbow trout. He was 14" long and weighed a couple of pounds. He was plump from a nice summer in the pond. His flesh was very pink ensuring a great flavor. 

The dogs were particularly interested in the fish. (But they got their normal kibble with some Alpo on the side.)

We decided to ditch our dinner plan and have the fish. It was big enough to filet, so we had trout filets fried in seasoned flour with a topping of crumbled bacon. First, I fried the bacon. Then, most of the bacon fat went into a cast iron skillet where I heated it up and tossed in some cubes of potato. Once that was mostly cooked to a nice crisp brown exterior, I dredged the fish filets in flour seasoned with salt and pepper. The filets then got fried in a little of the bacon fat supplemented with some canola oil. When done, after only a few minutes on each side, I removed them from the pan and deglazed with white wine. I added a few drops of cider vinegar and some chopped fresh savory (from our pitiful herb "garden"). We also heated up a can of mixed veggies--tomatoes, corn and okra. I served the fish with sauce and crumbled bacon on top with the potatoes and veggies on the side. The result was a fresh, yummy, and unplanned dinner.

That's both good and bad news. Good because we had no way to test if the system works as expected--automatically starting the generator when the battery bank voltage stays below a threshold voltage for some period of time. See this post for the details.

Bad, because that means we've gone a while without a full charge on the batteries.

I judge the state of the batteries by the number of Amp-Hours (Ah) they are "down" from a full charge. A full battery bank would have a value of zero Ah. As we pull power from the batteries, this number goes down. So, for example, if we use 10 amps (DC amps at ~24.5V) for an hour, they would go down by 10 Ah and the meter I use to measure system performance would register -10 Ah. (That would also be about 245 watt-hours of power usage.)

For you engineers reading this, I acknowledge that amps is not a measurement of power or energy storage. That would be watts. But, I argue that if we assume an average battery voltage of 24.5 amps, then Ah becomes a decent surrogate "gas gauge" for the battery bank capacity and usage.

Amp-Hours is also useful for a couple of other reasons. Battery capacity is specified in Amp-Hours, so there is a direct correlation there. My battery bank has a capacity of about 1100 Ah. So, if the meter reads -250 Ah, I know I've used about 1/4 of the total capacity. And, I never really want to use more than about 1/2 of the capacity in order to keep the batteries in good condition.

Anyway, back to the main topic. We had not achieved a full charge on the battery bank in many days. This is due to several mostly cloudy days in a row. We'd recover some each day, but not enough to compensate for our daily usage and make up for previous days' deficits. The table above shows the battery capacity readings first thing in the morning for several days.

On November 2, we were down more than 500 Ah, the battery voltage was below 23.4 volts, and after 2 hours, the generator kicked on. It ran until the batteries were fully charged, about 3 hours or so. The sun also came out brightly helping with the charge.

On November 4, I again used the generator, this time turning it on manually because I wanted to get an equalization charge (EQ) on the batteries. To quote the Trojan battery manual:

I also added distilled water on that day as equalization can boil off some of the water in the batteries.