Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow....

This morning we woke to snow, real snow. I bounced out the front door like the oversized kid that I am. From the front porch the street took on the qualities of a christmas postcard, monochromatic shades of greys and muted greens with a red splotch in the centre that is Em's car.
Looking down the street to the left, toward the main part of town, gives a very different picture from several days ago. This is the white world that I hoped to see, and Mother Nature delivered.
Look, no car tracks or footprints! This puts a whole new meaning on every day being the beginning of the rest of your life, for the briefest of instants it is possible to imagine that we're trailing a new path, going where no-one else has gone before. Only in sand and snow can you get this
Before we can start our day's adventure, the windscreen must be cleared of snow and ice. Scraping this stuff off really does give perspective to the few times a year when I have to throw a bucket of cold water over my car windscreen to clear off the frost. If you threw a bucket of water on this it'd be frozen again within seconds.
I couldn't resist... I had to throw some!
And then try to catch some on my tongue. :-)Em enjoyed my antics, and given that it was well below freezing and bitterly cold, I must have been quite entertaining. :-)We first drove to a bridge just out of town where we could get close to a frozen stream. I ventured out without my gloves (in my defense, Em's car is toasty warm and it's somewhat easy to forget just how incredibly cold it is when you get out). I sludged around in the snow snapping off photos until my fingers were ready to snap off, then scurried back to the car to get my gloves. Still, it took another five minutes after we'd returned to the car and were back on our way for my fingers to defrost. I now understand how easy it would be to freeze to death in temperatures like this.
Em's car adds a nice spot of interest to the snowy scene.
On the walls of one of the bridge supports, someone had declared their love for another.

This is one of the very few pieces of graffiti that I have seen while here. Liberty has none, at least from what I've seen, which is odd given that Em's car window was spray painted one night. There is a small tag on a building not far from her house, which may have been applied that same night. It's definately a rarity though. Compared to Melbourne where anything and everything is tagged and decorated (even my car bears a tag from some enterprising lout), there is an obvious absence of it here. I wonder why?
And then before my fingers entirely froze, I got a little creative.
From there we headed home to grab our gym gear, and happened to come up behind the postal deliverer. There are no bikes or motorbikes here (and given the weather, neither there should be). I was hoping that my Obama shirt might have been in this delivery, but alas, no. I trust it will come soon.
After gym and lunch we headed to Overland Park to a plant nursery. As you can see by the weather, indoor activities were the preference today.
And here we arrived at the nursery, an indoor, heated place where we could practice our photography without freezing our asses off. :-)I found the timber trays, like trailer beds, to be fascinating. I loved the mix of moss, timber grain and loose dirt and stones and thought they'd make an interesting still life study, or abstract shot. Well, *I* liked it.... ;-)

We left the nursery when it closed at 5pm, took a quick drive out to the Overland Park Arboretum and Botanical Gardens. We found it was just closing up, but our first impression (especially the two deer grazing by the fence) convinced us that we had to go back again.

From there we headed into Kansas City for some night photography. And, yes, it was somewhere below -10'C by this point in the evening and, including the wind chill, probably around the -20'C mark. Photographers show no fear in the face of extreme weather, so we hooded up, gloved up and manned up and trawled the streets in search of the perfect shot.

Along the way we saw car lots with snow covered cars.
And here we hit the streets.

First stop was a beautiful outdoor area lit with tree lights. The covered area houses an ice skating rink and there were several teenagers up there having a great time. Neither Em nor I felt the need to join in, we were skating our own snow covered paths and trying to maintain feeling in our fingers and faces.
There are very few operational fountains in Kansas City during the winter -- apparently the city is renowned for its multitude of fountains. We've been lucky to find the operational ones and this is one. And, yes, that is a wall of ice on the left hand side.Similarly, here are some concrete benches with an inch thick layer of ice affixed to the side.Next stop was the Power and Light district where we walked around for what must have been well over half an hour, snapping photos of the lights in the trees and the snow covered footpaths. I can honestly say that I have never been so cold in my life, but I still had a ball!
The snow in the streets has been well walked, as you can see. It wasn't slippery though, more like walking on footpaths after the rain. I avoided metal surfaces though as Em said those were quite slick, and we kept well shy of any patches that may have contained ice. We passed huge floor to ceiling windows that looked down into a fine food supermarket. It made my mouth water.
The blur in this next photo is a street cleaning grader, a snow plough. I was hoping to catch at least a glimpse of it but instead it's come out like a haunted ghost vehicle... which maybe is even better. :-)After we were appropriately frozen (my fingers burned, they were so cold, and then they tingled as they warmed back up again), we drove back to Liberty, quickly fed the dogs and then went to Los Compas, the local Mexican restaurant where I discovered just how much I love Mexican.

Here we are celebrating our great day with a margarita pina colada -- a strange mix of pineapple and ice cream with some tequila splashed in, I think.

This is what I had. Under the lettuce, sour cream and guacamole stack are four different enchiladas, beef, chicken, cheese and bean. I decided I like the beef the best, but it all tasted absolutely magnificent! I couldn't eat it all though. Next time I'll get a smaller serving.
And Emily had this, chicken chilli soup, I think. I tasted a little and it was great, not too hot and spicy at all. I've always avoided Mexican restaurants because I believed the food would all be too hot for me to eat, but now I'm learning differently.
All I can say is... YUM!!! :-D