Pretty cool change of plans, as it turned out.

After I dropped the boys at a Yu-Gi-Oh! tournament at Elite Sports, a card shop on Montrose, I ran up to NPVNC.

It's one of my favorite hikes in the city and I hoped to add a few stock photos. But the gates were locked and there was a sign hanging on the door about the holiday.

So I changed plans to wander around Montrose: see how the perch guys were doing (terrible and grousing about my fishing report), walk the Montrose Horseshoe and circle the Magic Hedge.

And I see two groups of people clustered with binoculars and cameras. One group was looking at a snowy owl high in a tower on the pier. I couldn't really make it out, even with my camera.

But the other one was perched right on top of the beach house at Montrose Beach. There was even a pack of kids playing on a sand dune in front of it, and it didn't move.

I took a couple photos and moved on.

All in all, kind of made a good way to end the year.

It reminded me of New Year's Eve in 2005 when I found the first snowy owl documented in Iroquois County, one of my few claims to fame in life, when taking our youngest on a nap run.

Snowy owls stick with you.