Wine cellar and snowshoe outing

Things are progressing nicely on both making wine and making a place to store all the wine once it is made! The old crawl space/hatch entrance in Quentin's bedroom has now been remodelled and we think will serve very nicely as our wine cellar. It is cool, damp, and dark - just right!

We still need to put a small light down there, and do a bit of insulating, but it's getting close. And that's good because next weekend we will bottle our first batch of merlot. Even though it is supposed to be best after a few months, we will have to sample a bottle just to see how it is now. then, we'll see if we can detect changes over time. So, soon I can post a photo of our new cellar with our bottled wine, and not just these store-bought imposters! The shelves are actually intended to be used with the other side up, as an upper shelf for a closet. But it works perfectly for wine storage, and raises up the bottle just right to keep the cork wet and the sediment to the bottom. And it wasn't expensive, so all in all, we came up with a pretty good set-up. and we will be able to store abut 200 bottles.

Yesterday, Marianne and I went snowshoeing up by Cameron Pass. We rented a small cabin in the Poudre Canyon the night before. I went out at about 9 p.m. until almost midnight listening for a boreal owl. But, alas, no luck. They are pretty rare in colorado, and this is one of the few places you can sometimes hear them calling. They nest in the high elevation forests, and when they are calling in march, these areas have many feet of snow! So, at Cameron pass, you can drive the road, stop and listen, and cover a fair amount of ground that way. So, there I was, standing in the dark, in the freezing cold, listening away for several hours.... but no luck. Ahh, for the good old days of seeing owls with the ease with which we saw 11 great gray owls during the daytime in Minnesota!

But the snowshoe outing was wonderful. There was a lot of good snow, and it actually was pretty warm. marianne and I both shed quite a few layers during our hike! We both decided to buy snowshoes and this was our first outing with them. Marianne's are made special for a woman's stide and worked well for her. We got up pretty high on Sawmill Creek trail and had a beautiful view where we had a bite to eat and then returned.