A nice winter's day.

Today is quite the winter's day here. It is not the warmest day we have ever had here, but real nice nonetheless. We have virtually no snow, and it is around 40 degrees at noon. It is a bit breezy, but hey, it can be a lot worse. We are not unfamiliar with open winters here, but on other hand we can get some tough winters once in a while, with lots of snow and wind.

I went out this morning to open a gate and let one bunch of cows into another rougher pasture. It has good shelter, and also lots of grass this year. The pasture should run the cows a long time, unless we get too much snow, and it covers up the grass. When we start feeding cake to those cows, I usually end up sitting and waiting for them a while as they sure can get scattered out. We happen to have a couple highpoints on our ranch that give a great vantage point of the surrounding country. One of them is in this pasture. When I am waiting for the cows to gather up, I am always amazed at what a beautiful view I have from up there. To the south, I can see Terry Peak, located in the Black Hills, and it is close to 70 miles in the distance. Looking to the west, the Short Pine Hills and Lone Mountain loom up nearby, and I can see parts of the Long Pine Hills, and the Sheep Mountains in Montana. Also the Jumpoff (you can see it in my first picture), is full of badlands and mud buttes, and lay just to the NW of here. To the North, I can see the Cave Hills and the prairie below, and to the East the Slim Buttes run a long ways from N. to S. All of these hills have pines, hardwoods, and other various scenery. And to cap things off, most of the prairie below has scattered mud buttes, that poke up like many loose haystacks on the range.

Once in a while you have to count your blessings, and it is always easy to appreciate life when you are in a scenic location and have plenty of time to soak things up.