Saturday Night

Whitefish at Dusk

 Saturday Night and a quick visit to the McKenzie River Pizza for a pie to go. Since Whitefish is a ski town the decorations are still up creating a dusky festive atmosphere downtown.

Great Northern Railroad

 Whitefish is also conveniently connected to amtrak and served by BNSF. One of the historic train engines sit outside the station . The station itself has a nice museum and features a Stuffed Mountain Goat. The Flathead Valley is fairly large with several different communities with different flavors. Whitefish has a nice small town feel to it with some great skiing near by .

Black Star Sunset

 We were blessed with clear skies again tonight with longer daylight hours. The sun blazes a good bye over the Black Star Brewery . They make some local brews and have a  place for lunch with spectacular views of the ski mountain.

Remaining Vestiges of the Holidays

So many trees decorated this year around town that I was exempted this year from the chore at home . The train station is in the background on the left of the tree . It has a nice Swiss look to it . Dusk is one of my favorite times mostly because that is what I get to see more than not but the sky takes on a life of it's own with deepening blues and painted fire colours.

Whitefish Mountain formally named Big Mountain for decades

A good nite to Whitefish for now . Pie in hand I turn the car toward the eastern mountains where I know of 4 dogs waiting for their slice . I know, they are  very spoiled puppies.

wordless thursday

Alpine Glow

How high is it?

Sun lingering low in the Southern Sky

Those who live in the Southern climates have the company of the sun year round. In the Great North West and some places north , the sun has a wild mood. In the summer it is frolicking till the late hours with dark coming well past 10PM. In the winter the sun barely crawls to 19 degrees above the horizon.  This could explain the lingering and piling of the snow in the winter. Then the tilt of the earth swings wildly back toward the Sun for the Northern Hemisphere  in March and April in anticipation of the warm season. What does it matter how high the sun climbs? Since we are part of Nature ( not just watching ) we have as a humans developed a close relationship with the Sun. The sun via vitamin D regulates our bone growth, immune system, and chronic illnesses. In fact sunshine influences expression of 10 % of our genes. So when the sun is less than 50 degrees on the horizon the rays are not able to shoot enough UVB rays to us to create Vitamin D the way mother nature intended. Here on the 48th parallel we only have 5 hours of above 50 degree sun on Summer Soltice. Sadly today the sun has only climbed to 19.6 degrees. Thanks sun good effort but no cigar. How do we know how high the sun climbs in our area? The US Navy has a website that allows you to calculate where the sun is positioned for your latitude. That being said once you find the availability of a natural source of vitamin D you can decide on supplementing . Dr Mercola has some informative reading on vitamin D replacement.

Two of the six Turkey friends

One of the fun things of being off from work and home is watching the local traffic. Earlier in the day a flock of  about 6 turkeys tromped through the yard. They seemed to loathe the deep snow and made their way slowly through the woods sinking up to their turkey "knees". I caught them on their way back through closer to sunset. I am still watching for something different than the usual deer tracks . With the abundant game surely mr cat is somewhere in the area.

Welcoming 2013

Swan Range in the Clouds