The Cross Country Ski Adventure

Visions of sugar plums danced in my head.  I strapped on my skis thinking I got this.  It's been 20ish years since I had been on cross country skis but it's like riding a bike, right?  You just get back on the skis and it would be just like years ago.  Boy, was I wrong.  Both Mariane and I had been on cross country skis in the past and both of us forgot everything.  Well, not everything!  I knew you could use the groom tracks, you had to go forward, and it was different than downhill skiing.  The most critical thing we both forgot was how to stop. That's really important.  The snow plow technique didn't seem to work the same as downhill skiing.  Some nice people saw our struggles and helped us with our crashes and gave us some tips.  They spent a good amount of time with us trying to get us up on our skis and doing that moving forward thing.  After they left the struggle was still real.  The conditions were icy. That complicated everything. Not a good day to start!  We took our skis off and started back down the trail.  Were we done?  NO WAY.

We were still in fantasy land here!

This was my crash on the first trail.  I am not kidding, the camera somehow took a picture without me.  It was around my neck and I felt it bounce around. When I looked at the pictures later I couldn't believe it.  Well, now my crash has been documented whether I wanted it to be or not.

We found a trail that wasn't as icy.  With some back and forth practice the skills started coming back.  The snow plow does work when you want to stop.  My skis don't have metal edges so you really have to move your knees in and get the edges of the skis up on the snow.  I got it.

We continued to venture farther down the trail and then come back.  The slightest downhill was an issue at first.  We mastered the stop and got those slight downhills conquered.  Next step will be a real hill.

 I love snow! I love snow!!!

 Winter is my favorite!!

 A nice little Christmas tree standing out from the crowd.

 The Selkirk lodge.

When we got our map at the beginning of the day the nice man said there were no really challenging trails on this hill.  Well, that is a matter of opinion! We ended this adventure with smiles on our faces and ready to go again.  It feels good when you master or should I say begin to master something that was difficult.  Now I have another way to play in the snow!!!   We are both excited to go again.  

We Tried to Take the Road Less Traveled

Beautiful day for a hike in the mountains.  The Wild Moose Chase Trail Run.  Our leg started at 10:30.  We had never done this so didn't know about parking, location, etc. We wanted to make sure we had plenty of time before the race started.  We arrived about 45 minutes early.  It was a bit chilly and we immediately started trying to figure out a way to start early. Maybe with another leg of the race?  We would be warm if we started immediately. 

First things first.  We found the outhouse and used it.   You always have to that you know.

What a day.  Fall colors popping out.  A lone chair lift.  Maybe it was part of the ski area at Mount Spokane at one time.  Or maybe a sledding hill.

We went into the lodge where a fire was burning and it was toasty warm.

Well, I guess we didn't have to use the outhouse.  That was a bummer discovering this.  Rookie mistake.

OK, let's check things out.  The start line and the finish line for everyone was the same but where were the routes for the different lengths.  We did not want to get on the 25K path for sure.  Maybe we could just walk past these people and start.  Was that the right way?

We notice the group before us going down this area. No ambulance rides please.  We decided to check it out.  We started walking and they were all long gone.

Maybe they went this way.  We were supposed to follow the orange markers for the 5K.  We walked.

Sheila started her Apple Watch.  We kept walking, then turned around and headed a different way.  We saw arrows on the ground and we followed them but no orange markers.  We finally talked to someone and we were going the wrong direction for our distance.  Well, at least we got some more steps in.  We headed back to the lodge.

Got our together picture taken.

And it was almost 10:30.  That didn't work out very well.

Here we go with the rest of the 5K people.  It was a good effort but unsuccessful.

What a beautiful day.  The chill of fall was in the air!

Some trails were plenty wide and some more narrow.

I snapped lots of pictures of the scenery.

This one is my favorite.

I mentioned  to Sheila that I thought we went uphill more than downhill.  One thing about trail runs in the mountains they have hills.

These mean boys told us we could not go up the big hill behind them.  It doesn't look that big but it was.  They said no way.  We really wanted to climb it but we weren't allowed to.  We were so disappointed.  It was toward the end of the trail run.  It would have been a great challenge.  Darn!  Haha!

Arrows made of flour, no harm to the environment.

We are done!  We actually found the moose! He looks sort of funny though.  Standing on two legs?  He is red.  What's that about?

The end! Another adventure in the books.  God is good, Got is good, all the time!