Snowqualmie Falls Icicles, a Sketch and a Blog Tip

A frozen ice palace with giant icicles surrounded the falls while the water created a powdery mist...
A Day Trip
The last few days I have been seeing on the local news how Snowqualmie Falls was experiencing a big freeze around it and lots of icicles had formed around the falls. We had never seen them with snow and ice around them before, so, despite predictions of snow flurries today, off we went since they are only an hour from our house. Absolutely breathtaking, white against the dark rocks, lacey and jagged, solid and fluid in the cold cold air.

These gorgeous falls are approximately 270 feet in length. I have seen them many times, and many years ago we used to go to the bottom of the falls at summer or fall dusk on Seattle Mountaineer "owl hikes" (since they were evening hikes with cookout dinners)... Now I have relished them in their winter coat too.
A montage of photos clockwise starting top left: from the viewpoint in the park, a large icicle about 70 feet long on the left of the waterfall, white wintry sky at noon behind the dark trees, and the utility buildings above the falls.
And though my hands wouldn't work too well in the cold, I managed to quick sketch the feel of the falls to me. Photo's and sketching, good things to do, as it requires a pausing to really take in what the eye sees, to really see the details and feel the awesome wonder out there. My thought for today, go outside even if it's cold or raining, the weather isn't "bad", maybe you just have the wrong clothes... pause, take in, reflect, record... breathe and enjoy.
An old barn along the back roads that we took...

Blog Tip
Way back in time in my blog I mentioned that I had a posting problem I hadn't resolved. Then it worked for a short while and then it didn't again. And finally a couple of days ago, I believe I resolved it. Here's a summary for you, in case you have this issue you can try it and see if it works.

Problem: There are some blogs I visit where my comments disappear and are never posted after I have typed them in and clicked "post". I have noted that these are blogs that make the comment box available on the same page as the posting versus the kind of blogs like mine that open up a comment box on a separate page without the posting showing.

My fix: I spent a bit of time on reviewing my firewall, and even made sure certain blogs were in the allowed category - to no avail. I also checked out "tools>options>privacy and ensured that those certain blogs of friends were in the "exceptions" category and not blocked - also did not work. Finally, I thought of checking something that I even mentioned in my posting of April 15 - changing browsers. So, what I found out is this:
-- Mozilla Firefox browser will work - allow me to make comments on blogs that open a separate page for the comments, while,
-- Internet Explorer browser will work - allowing me to make comments on blogs that have the comment box on the same page.
I don't know why. But now when I want to comment on the few that use the same page for comments, I use the IE browser.......!!! Go figure.