Finally, by evening yesterday the snow stopped falling. We'd had a good accumulation. Our son mentioned he'd  try not to make any sound to wake us up this morning with his intention to sneak out of the house before breakfast for some skiing. So he went off just after 7:00 -- after shovelling out the end of the driveway where the municipal plow always leaves great piles of snow after plowing the road -- into the ravine before most people would be up on New Year's Day.

After we all had breakfast, it was our turn. Not a full-scale romp through the ravine's snowy forest interior as we indulged in yesterday, but a minor circuit, just to get the circulation going and to give Jackie and Jillie the chance to enjoy some snowtime on the forest trails. We planned to leave as soon as we got back home, for a drive to our daughter's house in the countryside.

The day was destined once again to be fully overcast, with some minor precipitation, and a high temperature of 2C, much milder than it usually is at this time of year, particularly for New Year's Day, for January is typically one of the colder winter months here. The weather, we found, was quite different by the time we arrived at our daughter's house. The atmosphere was bathed in sunlight and snow was beginning to drip off trees.

As for our trip through the forest, we saw no one else out while we were on the trail. The snow is beginning to be tamped down, but its fluffy fullness still presents a challenge to firm footing, and we took our time on a shorter circuit which took us for the most part on a long ridge overlooking the valleys of the forested ravine. Light snow was falling, not enough to make much of an added impression on the snow that had already fallen the day before.

But since it covered the ice that had accumulated days previous to the snow event, we had no concerns about slipping on the ascents and descents of the trail system, although new, loose and deep snow does have that effect, as well. That run through the forest trails set Jackie and Jillie up for a long drive. Which was our intention. They're not entirely discombobulated travelling in a vehicle, but they'd rather not. They're not quite good travellers.

In any event, off we set for the hour-and-a-half it takes to arrive at our daughter's house. It's a log house actually, built around 1860 as a local schoolhouse. A much smaller log house sits across the highway, which was meant as an abode for the schoolteacher. Our daughter's house was added to, a second floor installed at the turn of the 20th Century.

The couple that owned the house before our daughter bought it from them, had built a glass walled chamber leading to the house entrance, a cheerful foyer, and it runs along the front of the house, then expands into an additional chamber which itself is linked to another addition of another room and alongside it a bathroom, then steps leading up to a second-floor room with a kitchenette and a bedroom and a door leading to an outside balcony.

It is, in fact, a beautiful log house. Our daughter bought it around fifteen years ago when she was looking for a place suitable to house herself, her daughter, and their menagerie; their two cats, six rabbits and ten dogs of all sizes and breeds. She stretched a wire fencing enclosure across the front of the house to give the dogs ample room to run about safely and unsupervised without fear of their roaming close to the road.

Over time her large brood reached their natural lifespans, leaving her now with one cat, no rabbits, one elderly Chihuahua, an aging part German Shepherd and a new large, gangly puppy, an Anatolian Shepherd almost a year old, a rescue dog, just like all the others were.