In which we begin the year as we hope to continue: sun and fun

It's good to begin as we intend to continue.

My favorite kind of New Year's firework:
sunshine! 

To celebrate the beginning of 2015, we started the day with a decadent late breakfast, followed by some couch-dog-book time.  

Then, Jim and Roo and I headed outdoors to explore.

The trailhead site is sort of a wide spot beside a retired dairy farm --
enough room for a few cars, and not much else.

 There's a new/old trail in town, built on an abandoned Burlington-Northern railroad right-of-way, and only a few miles from Haiku Farm.  

The train tracks are long gone, but until very recently, the trail itself was just an occasionally-brushhogged path

Recently brushhogged, but still needs some clearing.
There's a better way around, of course we found that
on the way back!

with more than 20 bridges all in need of new decking.

Pickles Marie and I explored a different bit of this trail in 2011. 

Since then, private funding has been secured to repair the decks and reconnect the towns via the trail.

There was a setback over Thanksgiving weekend, when the flooding near the catastrophic landslide site in Oso  washed over the recently-repaired trail.

Sigh.

Engineering in the Swampland is always challenging.

We chose to walk a more westerly stretch of trail that hadn't been impacted by flooding.  In fact, it shows signs of recent improvements!

Our friend Connie is on the Centennial Trail committee, which works with the (soon-to-be) 27-mile long Whitehorse Trail.

She told us via Facebook that they are experimenting with different types of trailbed material.

Connie and Farah's hoofprints!

We loved the sand-over-rock footing.  Easy for pedestrians, and it will be easy for bicycle tires and hooves too.

Not all of the trail we saw today had this lovely sand.  Mostly it was rock--sometimes compacted into roadbed, and sometimes loose.  The loose stuff was hard to walk on for my still-wobbly joints, and for Roo's tender paws.

The equestrian we met on the trail disliked the loose rock, too.

Nicole's horse Phoenix is a lovely mare who clearly didn't appreciate
the big, loose gravel

We didn't complain too much about the footing, though.

It was too nice to be outside walking in the sunshine on the first day of the year, and playing around with the camera.

I've been practicing with the telephoto lens on the
Newest Camera.  These fishermen were at least
half-a-mile away from us.

Great Blue Heron

Moss and flare.  Welcome to my world.

I'm not the only one with a solar battery

Another telephoto shot--this moss was on a branch overhead

This tree has adapted nicely to living on a cliff

"Did you bring my tennis ball?"

Pretty bridge

I took this telephoto shot for lytha at the HorseCrazyAmerican blog,
because that clump of trees on the left always looks to me like an
Imperial Storm Walker.

Here's the un-telephoto view. I see something this on my
commute every day...when I commute in daylight, that is, which
is mostly not this time of year!

When we got home, Jim made a big pot of savory bean soup, and we all slurped that down hungrily before crashing back on the couch with dogs and books.

2015 : so far, so good.