It Snowed As Predicted

The prediction was 4" on Friday night starting at 8pm, another 2" on Saturday. I usually cut their estimates in half where I live. By 10:30pm, Stella and I went outside and saw nothing ... no snow, no rain, no clouds, just nothing. Had the experts been wrong again? Just as I turned out the lights a little after midnight I heard the snow plow for the first time. I am too close to the highway not to hear his blade hit that seam in the highway every 10 feet. I also know that every time he passes my house, the end of my driveway and mailbox will be buried deeper in the snow. We woke up to some snow on the ground but it was too hard to see if it was deep or not. At 7:55am, Stella and I headed out to see what was up.

From the way the snow looked against Stella's leg, I'd say we had a couple of inches but not 4". As I walked further back into the field, it looked like that 4" prediction was right. Stella didn't seem to mind and at 30° the chances of her getting frozen snow or ice in her paws were pretty slim. It wasn't cold enough for that to happen. I could tell she was having fun. This snow brought back memories of Sadie because she absolutely loved the snow and most of the time it would energize her and Stella into running around in it, wrestling in it and burying their noses in it.

What is it about a field full of snow that makes everything much more quiet than a normal day?

Stella wasn't in any hurry but was still moving out pretty far ahead of me. As I glanced around the ground I did not see one sign of deer traffic. I didn't anywhere on the walk.

I was pretty sure I had turned off the light in the computer room before I left ... then after looking more closely I figured out that it was my monitor lighting up the window.

She almost went into the woods but for some reason turned around to get out about as fast as she went in.

In that picture, it does look like 4" of snow. It doesn't matter really ... it's suppose to rain later this afternoon and tonight .. the field will turn into a swamp and the daily walks will be suspended until further notice.

She has decided it's time to head home.

Remember what I said about her pressing her nose into the ground sometimes ... snow doesn't make a difference. She wasn't eating any deer scat but something had made her investigate this area a few minutes longer than normal

Then she takes off again, getting as far away from me as possible.  LOL

By the way she was moving it looked like she was going to run to the neighbors or the woods behind their house. She hasn't been over there in a long time.

At first I thought she heard the snow plow coming down the highway but realized the neighbor was turning their truck around to leave. So far she has not run to their house, since they moved in last summer but she has always been very interested when she sees someone outside. She has never bolted on me but I keep an extra eye on her when I see people outside.

In back of that snow plow is Indiana's finest salt and sand ... popular to use on ice and snowy highways ... and take years off of your car or truck. With all the food I need, two NFL games on today, and a couple of books to read ... I am not driving anywhere just to see if the Countryman can make up back up my driveway. I don't need salt and sand under my car, in the wheel wells or between my bumpers, I'll let the rain clean the highway before I go anywhere. If I needed food I would definitely leave but no need to. That snow plow has been running all night ... besides, it might be a nice day to stay inside and change the blog template. LOL

The fence tells me we barely got two inches of snow. It never lies.

Question of the Day --- How do you sign up to follow my blog by email IF you do not have a WordPress account, and you don't blog anywhere?? I've been sent a screen by a friend that tried to follow this morning by email and after she clicks "confirm" she gets the WordPress subscription management page telling her "Your subscription could not be activated. It may have expired, or the email address you subscribed with is not attached to your WordPress.com account." She has no plans to get a WordPress account since she does not blog. Any ideas?

I am still finding the new dashboard that WordPress is working on in the background is still sucking up data like water. I only test it before 8am so I can waste my free data as a test. This morning it used over 500Mb in two hours. I will still continue to use the dashboard in the wp-admin. That is just a FYI for those of you that use WordPress and do not have unlimited data or have unlimited data until you hit AT&T or Verizon thresholds and have them slow your speeds down.

I almost forgot .... you didn't think Heidi would go out in this white stuff did you?

It's nice today in "the tropics" of Southern Indiana.

A Morning Drive In The Area

It seemed like a good idea at the time, early Thursday morning. Both hounds like riding in the car but that doesn't mean they sit up the whole way, looking out the window and enjoying the scenery passing by. Stella always likes to go even if we are not going anywhere. She will check the back door of the Mini Countryman as she walks by it just in case that door pops open after she pushes her nose onto it. Heidi on the other hand, probably only rides because I want her to. I've always had the feeling she doesn't enjoy going in the car that much.  She is experienced though, with the 3,000 mile trip in June 2015 and a short turn around trip to Arkansas in September 2013.

We hadn't left yet and I am not sure what her look means. She might be trying to comprehend the seat warmers, noted by those two small green lights in front of her nose. It didn't take long for her to lay down and go back to sleep.

The local area is a pretty neat geography lesson. As we go south to southeast it is all hills. Either a few miles west or about 20 miles southwest like we are heading, the land is flat as far as you can see. I was hoping to get some photos of that difference in the landscape as we left Thursday morning. The plan was subject to change but I had the "42 mile loop" as the main idea.

Both of those pictures don't show the steepness of the hills we were traveling on.

By this time we have traveled five to eight miles from the last picture, driven through a very small farming community and are headed west.

Those high power towers are the same line you see on our walks through the field. They will go another 75 miles to the Ohio River.

To me this is just a drastic difference in land in such a short distance. Geography experts will know the reason or could it explain it much better than I can, but I was told once it was just how the glaciers spread throughout the state of Indiana.

We are heading north on the same highway that I use to dive the Z4 on. This is the highway where the cops would have thrown away the keys if they had ever caught me. With a nice smooth highway and plenty of room to see what was ahead of you, it was very hard not to test the specs for the highest speed

This irrigation system will be busy next summer.

After we had passed through another farming town of Newberry I decided to turn off onto a country road, thinking I'd have plenty of chances to stop the car, stand outside the door and take some pretty good pictures. The times I did that up to this point, Heidi always thought we were all getting out of the car and would step over onto the driver's seat ... my seat. Stella was stretched out in back and rarely woke up from her morning nap.

Like I said when we started, plans change and sometimes they change pretty quickly. I knew by the way this road looked it was going to have to be two hands on the steering wheel even if we were going 40 mph. It looks straight there, but within a few miles it was curvy, some hairpin turns or stop signs at the bottom of a blind hill. Just like it should as we drove east ... the closer we got to 'my area' all the flat land had disappeared, replaced by short steep hills on a rough and narrow country road.

She finally sat up in her seat instead of lowering head over the floorboard, and gave me the look "I have to get outside" ... I pulled into a dirt driveway heading to a barn and let her out on my side of the car. She had to pee .... she must have been holding it since we left home because I was beginning to wonder if she was ever going to stop. After I lifted her back onto my seat and she took her seat ... we were only a few miles from the highway to take us home. That tower you can see in the center of the picture is the same tower I take a picture of when we are in back of the field on our walks.

Two seconds after I turned the car off and opened my door, Heidi jumps out and sprints for the front yard. It looked like we made it home just in time.

It was still in the low 20's so she wasn't going to stay outside too long. Stella and I were already in the house waiting for her to come to the door. As far as Stella was concerned, this travel day was over. She went back to her spot in front of the island to sleep the rest of the morning away. Honestly, local drives with the hounds will be few and far between. I'll go out and take pictures but they don't have to go, since they would rather stay home and sleep. They liked being back home by the way their tails looked running in the house.

It was cold Thursday morning but by Saturday we are looking at 4"-6" of snow in this area.

An Airport?? Really??

I wish I knew how to draw circles in this picture, around things of interest because there is a funny one and a warning. To the right notice the sign "Congested Area" ... where is the congestion? Is it traffic congestion or people congestion? Trucks? What? That sign looks permanent and not just something they planted for road construction, road closures, a festival, a Harley convention, a rock concert in one of the local cornfields .. no ... it says "Congested Area". I'll drive safely.

You are really going to have to have your eyes focused on the 'warning' I am going to show you. A little information to add before I point him out. That highway behind me is a 55mph speed zone for about eight miles of highway. People are usually flying by my house 65-75 mph because it's flat, nice wide highway and I know that because the times I have flown by my house in the past I was also doing 65-75 mph. As you get closer to town it moves to 50 mph but right as you cross a bridge and your are in this business area ... it's 40 mph in a blink of an eye. You better get there no matter how fast you were going on the highway ... because .... If you look just left of that white/silver SUV is waiting to pull out is a car facing our direction.

Do you see the left headlight on the edge of that bush? Well there sits the city's finest just waiting to catch someone, anyone going faster than 40 mph. He catches them coming from either direction ... He will chase you outside the city limits if he has too. The County Treasurer Department is always looking for voluntary donations ... even if that guy in the hidden car has to help you fill out the paperwork.  :)


Just past those woods is a major river running north to south in the state. That is also my source for 'city' water. This little pump house is part of the water department a little ways outside of town. What is interesting is the reason WHY that house and that other fixture is elevated. In June 2008 a few days before I was hit with straight-line winds, there was so much rain in the lower half of the state, the river overflowed the banks from Indianapolis to the southern state line 150 miles away. In our area there was so much water that three out of four highways going into the city were closed because they were completely underwater.

Of course, curious me, I had to see it first hand. Since I lived on the only road open to town I drove as far as I could, so I could see the damage. I didn't get far after turning left downtown. In fact I didn't get past the edge of town ... the highway through here was one huge lake.  It took a few days for the waterline to recede, before they could reopen the highway. I could get a closer view at 'my' water system. The green roof and the top part of the pole on the right was all that was visible, everything else was a nice lake. I was never so happy to have that pump built so high because during those flood conditions I always had clean clear water ... while many didn't have any water at all.

Nothing recent ... I have not lived here long enough to know it's history. That is on the river I talked about in the above paragraph. The woods is just right of the picture.

Where are we going today? What is this? or What is that and those buildings? Those are hangars for small private aircraft and somewhere out there is a runway. Yes, they fly airplanes out of one of the busiest airports in the world. Can't you see all the traffic I am behind as I stepped outside my car to get this picture. Remember this is January, not July. Business might ... might be a little slow this time of year ... since the holidays are over.

As I turned in behind those hangars I wanted to show you the wide open skies these daredevils fly in. Whereas in San Diego, those pilots have to start their decent over some small mountains west of the city, clear residential neighborhoods then city buildings ... catching the runway just in time or ending up in the San Diego Bay. Here the only danger is missing the corn fields or soybean fields that border their landing approach.

When I saw one car parked I thought there might be a chance for me to get up in the control tower as a tourist or maybe find a tour to sign up for. Everything was locked up tighter than a drum. It looks like a fairly new wind sock and a good set of windows ... business must be good.

Runway lights??

The "Fuel Pits"

The runway is just right of the soybean field. To me it looks like they have plenty of room to land. What would I know, I am just a Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000 Professional pilot. I also did quite well on the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 ... but that's when I had a PC. I'd love to have one of those simulators on my Mac.

As you can see air traffic was pretty congested above the airport but by the looks of their flight paths, neither is requesting permission to land here.

This is just a sample of how hectic life can be living near the city. From "Congested Areas" to "The Busiest Airport In The World", it's probably best the hounds and I stay secluded out on the farm away from all the stress.

You can fly if you want, into 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.