Saturday, January 12, 2008

Christmas vacation

We continued our tradition of visiting Park City, UT, for Christmas. What can one do there? Lots!
Here we are sporting our Christmas gifts to each other. Wool shirts. We had probably the quietest Christmas ever. It was just the two of us, as my parents didn't arrive until the day after.

It was really cold, so we played indoor mini golf, using a bottle cap as the hole. Watch out for hazards!


We made some Christmas cookies. We had forgotten to buy eggs, so Jill substituted yogurt. Yummy!

And there was lots of snow. Here's Jill enjoying a cozy soft seat on the powder.

There were a couple really big storms just before we arrived. During our stay, we had a one 6" storm and then a 2' storm. Lots of white!

Did I mention that there was lots of snow. At the top of the hill, the snow went to the bottom of my grip. DEEP! Our snowshoeing arrangement was for me to break trail and Jill to follow in my steps. With each step, the snow was squished about 1 1/2 to 2'. Despite the 'greatest snow on earth', this was still very hard work for me. Really fun for Jill!We really enjoyed our time with mom and dad. Lots of yummy food, playing games, and watching football in HD.

Mom, dad, and I went skiing one day 'together'. Well, mom and dad skied together for part of the day. I was skiing stuff that was too hard for me over and over again. Now that I only ski once or twice a year, it's a lot harder to ski the steep chutes. It took about 4 runs to get back any sense of what I was doing. I felt pretty good for maybe 2 runs, and then my legs just got completely worn out.

On my last run of the day, I mistakenly ended up skiing the chute where an avalanche had killed a skier just before Christmas. It was a very eery feeling, as I don't think anyone else had skied it since. The 4' wall of snow where the avalanche had broken was clearly visible, and the debris field was scattered along the run.

Thanks to the kindness of my parents, this was a very inexpensive vacation. No charge for lodging, about $200 in gas, about $250 for food (thanks again, mom and dad), $79 for skiing (for one ticket -- really -- ouch), free snowshoeing, $50 in Park City mementos. Pretty good for a week and a half vacation. Anyone wanna' join us this summer for a week?

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