Let's hope this coming year is going to be one we can all be proud of. It's going to start out busy for me because we are transforming our river coalition into a non-profit organization and it's requiring a lot of documentation and communication with our newly-formed board of directors.

I arrived here Wednesday night at about 8 pm after a long 13 hour drive from Las Vegas. The cat handled it okay. I bought a spray product that is cat phermones that is supposed to clam her in the car. It might have helped some because she stopped carrying on sooner than she ever has. She doesn't enjoy road trips, and sometimes it feels like cat abuse. After the first 100 miles she resigns herself and endures. But she seemed to enjoy her time in Las Vegas, and she's glad to be back here in Colorado, so that bit of torture seems to be worth it.

The neighbors in Las Vegas threw away a cat condo that smaller and not as sturdy as the other one we got out of the trash a few years ago, so now we have two of them. Mr. Troutbend might bring one when he comes for the summer. I drove my truck, but it has a tonneau cover on the bed and we didn't want to work out how to cover part of the load but still have room for that cat condo to stick up above the edge of the truck bed.

I came through Wyoming and didn't take any pictures. There's not much to photograph there. The roads were dry, but I could see that the Christmas Eve storm made for bad driving conditions a few days before I got there. All this bad weather and flooding across the country is really something, isn't it? We've been told that global warming is going to bring weather chaos in years to come, but I didn't expect it to start so soon.

I was waiting for a post card from the state informing me that the required information is available at the county so I can get the plates for my new truck. It ended up in the wrong mail box at our local post office, but those people know me, so they called to tell me it came. I don't need the card, just need to know that it has arrived. If it hadn't shown up, I would have had to take some extra steps next week.

It's colder than cold here. The river is going to freeze over completely if it keeps up, and maybe I'll meet my goal of being able to walk across it on the ice and see things from an angle we don't usually get to have.