Tracks

The roads might have been more treacherous than the trails this morning. Even my screw shoes didn't help much with the thin layer of black ice that was coating our walkway, driveway and the sides of the roads. So, given that the powerline trail from the high school to Highland Green Road actually wasn't all that bad - hard packed, water-logged and semi-frozen snow with some slushy and icy areas, but all grippy - I chose to run the lines. It was a nice morning, bright and sunny, and there were some great tracks to be seen along the way: human, dog, kitty cat, snowmobile, truck (WTF? Someone had taken a truck on the wide stretch of trail from Bay Park. Weird!), turkey, deer, squirrel, rabbit, a big and distinct set of snowshoe hare tracks followed closely by what I think must have been a red fox based on the size and the overlapping front/hind tracks, the tunnel of a little vole crossing the trail, and one little "highway" of small bird prints. Wish I had had my camera along to document the tracks! [Edited to add: Found a neat site with photos of tracks that will be fun to look at for future "tracking."]

Ended up with a pretty slow 5 miles to close out the week at 34.5 miles (darn that 0.5 miles! Should have run a bit more this morning, I guess! Oh well.).

Speaking of tracks, Sam started asking about finger painting this morning before it was even light out, so by 7:00 am, she was in her chair, making her own "tracks" in the paint :-)

This was followed by a late morning creative marking session with crayons and a box :-)