The story starts - Joe and I decided that playing in the snow would be fun. Normally this is something we would save for Idyllwild. It's about an hour from our house; we get a cabin in town and play in the snow, shop in the cute, little stores, and then settle into our place for the night or two. Well there isn't any snow in Idyllwild until February-ish normally and we wanted to do snow this week. So Joe had the amazing idea to take the aerial tram up to the top of the mountain in Palm Springs. There is snow at the top of the mountain, let's do it.
I have never been excited about the idea of taking that tram. The whole idea freaks me out, but I figured, why not give it a go. So we did, after gathering all the warm clothes and snow gear we could, buying sleds at Sports Chalet, and packing up snacks and such. It was SO DARN COLD when we got to the top! It was raining down below, so when we got to the top of the mountain, it was of course snowing. We did anticipate this. What we did not anticipate was the wind factor. We knew it was 20 mph winds at the top, but we didn't know what that really meant until we got up there.
We had come this far though and we were going to play in the snow. So we bundled up, headed outside, and walked about a mile downhill to the valley area where the wind was calmer and we could use our newly purchased sleds.
Funny thing, speaking of sleds, we had bought three, but we obviously we're not going to be using these sleds like we had thought all day long. I heard someone saying they were going to buy a sled in the gift shop and I knew they were $20 at the gift shop. So I grabbed the girl and said, hey, do you want to buy one of our sleds for $7? I was happy I made a little money back on the sleds since we didn't need all of them and we were not going to drag those puppies back up the hill when we were done to save them for next year.
Back to the snow. We got to the bottom of the hill and sledded, sled, slid, I don't know, down the hill a couple of times. Oliver really just wanted to eat the snow, which he could have done without the mile walk to the bottom. Henry just looked sad, all red-cheeked and runny-nosed. So after maybe twenty minutes we headed back up the hill.
On the way up, the wind kicked up so hard, it was a rough walk back. For the most part, Henry buried his little face in my chest so that he was protected. But at the end stretch of the path, the wind was blowing so hard, the snow was just pelting me in the face and I had brain freeze big time. Who knew that could happen without eating or drinking something cold. I am not sure what Joe's experience was, but I'm sure it was something similar since he was carrying Oliver the whole way.
We went inside, shook off the snow, and went back down the mountain on the tram. Once we were back to the car, changed into dry clothes, and driving towards home, Joe and I decided it was a fun day. It's too bad we don't still need some winter cards of some sort because we got some pretty good snowy photos. I would head back up the mountain on the tram again during the summer to do some hiking in gentler weather conditions. But we will save our snow days for Idyllwild next time.
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