Too many days at home over the holidays was making me and the poodles quite stir crazy so on New Years Eve I texted my road trip buddy and asked if she was up for a day trip to somewhere to do pictures!  She was totally game and left her hubby at home all cozy in bed, loaded up her snowshoes (cuz you never know) and met me on Saturday for a road trip.   I wasn't entirely set on where I wanted to go but finally decided to travel up north through the Seeley-Swan valley and see what we might see (other than snow - love those road cams).

We were blessed with pretty much dry highways and as the sun came up in the East I saw this lovely little building with that cool early morning glow so we stopped about 1/2 way to our intended location, hopped out and got the cameras warmed up.

We got an absolutely lovely sunrise and the scenery was breathtaking as we drove on.  It appeared we were going to have a full sun kind of day to work with (which I was kind of planning for based on the weather predictions).   I had hopes that if we made good time we might be able to drive in to Holland Lake (if they had plowed) and possibly find some great scenery there and be able to let the poodles out for a romp.  

What I didn't plan on was the impending fog and low hanging clouds we seemed to drive into about 5 miles from the turn off.   Oh well, we were there we just as well drive in and see what we could see.    Here are the results from our frigid (yes it was -14F when we stopped) and short walk out on the lake ice and some of the things we saw around the lodge.    There hadn't been much plowing and I was grateful not only for 4WD but for what had been done and that we didn't get stuck (I remembered to pack the winter gear box but forgot the snow shovel).

Technical note:  I am pretty happy with the photos from the day and I forced myself to get into my Lightroom software and try to use it for post processing.   I am scheduled for a class on it come spring and figured that even though it ticks me off that it isn't as intuitive as I think it should be, I would "try".  I don't think I toasted anything too badly.  The ones with the fancy copyright were out of Lightroom and the others I just did in PSE. 

Lighting was definitely a challenge with the sun coming up and the snow and the dark mountains and trees in addition to the clouds and fog.  So I just went with it and played around with exposures and such. The poodles were thrilled to be able to just run run run until we were almost back at the truck and the cold and snow got to the paws and Sterling started the freezing feet dance.  Luckily we were within about 50 feet of the truck and we just hustled them inside and got the heater going.   The Epic picture below isn't technically all that great (blurry) but the free flying ears just totally made me smile!  That is how we roll.