Winter Arrived...the last weeks of February

Snow at Christmas and that was it.  Temperatures in early February reached 50 degrees a couple of days. Then the cold moved in.  And then the snow came: the first day, we got 10 inches of the white stuff; the second day, the wind brought more snow.  It's good for the mountains, because that's our water during the summer months.  And I had to see what it looked like because a snow landscape has become my favorite.  I don't enjoy being out in the snow, but I love looking at all the scenes.  All of the following photographs were taken no more than 6 feet from the car, and many were taken from the car.  (Hwy 204 is known as the Tollgate Highway over the Blue Mountains from Elgin to Spout Springs...and on to Weston and Pendleton or to Walla Walla.)