COLD!

Cold! Yes, that's what I have all right. Runny/stuffy nose, red eyes, sneezing, coughing and all that.

Oh, but that's not what the them of "Cold" is supposed to be about, though if  picture of myself with a cold would not be so dreadfully unflattering, I would post it as my header for this week. I'm not the least bit vain.

You wouldn't have thought that our vacation in Arizona in winter would have been cold. It wasn't, for the most part. But the day we went to Fountain Hills for the Chinese Lantern Festival it was downright chilly.

But let's get down to some real cold. The festival was cold because we were not expecting it. When you are prepared, then the cold can be fun.

So let's go to our favorite place for cold weather fun--Mt. Rainier.

First of all, a couple of waterfalls. This one is on the east slope of the Naches Loop Trail. We hiked it this last summer and saw this waterfall:

which we had also seen when we did the same trail a few years ago in November:

And Narada Falls looks a bit different in the two seasons.

The plants high on the mountain adapt themselves to sometimes frigid temperatures. Look how the lupine leaves handle the frozen dew (this was taken in August.)

 

Still pondering which of my cold images will make the header this week. I had first thought this bit of ice on the Nisqually River. I may come back to it.

 ...or these icicles. I'm still looking. You will see soon.

Some of my headbanger colleagues are locked in the winter blasts that are hovering over the Eastern US. That perhaps was the inspiration for Lew proposing this theme.  You can see what they did with it by clicking their links in my sidebar.

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I was looking for some enormous icicles, and the frosted barbed wire. But finally settled on the iced over pond near our son's home in Spokane for the header. It really looks cold, but we had on our boots, snowpants, gloves and hats. It's all in being prepared.