Thaw?

I'm not convinced yet, but for the last few days, the weather has been warmer. Yesterday the high was 39 degrees. That's definitely warm enough to start melting snow. In a lot of places, the roads are down to the asphalt or gravel. There are also lots of really muddy puddles. (More like small muddy lakes.) Our car is covered in dirt from all the muddy water.

Today Samara had to open up the thrift shop at SAFE for a few hours, since the regular employee is on maternity leave. Left to my own devices, I decided to take a little walk. The snow isn't melted enough to make hiking a very good prospect, but it's improving.

I walked over to the next street and down to the beach. You can see that there's still lots of snow.

I had thought about exploring the shoreline up past the beach, but the snow and ice was still too deep. I decided to head down the beach towards town instead. The tide was flowing out, and there are still giant boulders of ice along the shore.

When I reached the part of the beach near that ice boulder, I realized that I was right below my apartment building and looked up at the bluffs.

It seemed like I could probably climb the cliff fairly easily. It was easier than I expected, actually. The mud and dirt tend to slide down into the retaining wall here, but where grass was growing, it's easy to get traction. About halfway up, I took another couple pictures of the bay.

This is the cliff, halfway to the top:

The only problem with that climb is that the snow at the top was still about 3 or 4 feet deep. I couldn't walk across it to our apartment without sinking in up to my thighs. So I just crawled instead. I probably looked strange if anyone saw me, but it was a lot easier than walking all the way along the beach back to town and then back up my street.

If the weather stays nice, I expect to spend a lot more time outside.