We planned our annual Christmas trip a little differently this year. Based on our success on heading home in one day this summer, we planned to leave Friday after school and arrive Saturday afternoon. And come back to home in one day again.
Friday Dec 20, we packed up our car and picked up Jackson at 3pm. We were trying to get to the mountain as early as possible to avoid the crowd we saw at Wolf Creek between Christmas and New Year. After we picked up Norah from JCC at 3:20pm, we headed to Childress, Texas. We arrived Hampton Inn in Childress with our McDonald drive through food about 7pm. Eating at the lobby of our hotel was a much better experience than eating at McDonald's. Our hotel was good except wall was pretty thin and we could hear neighbors pretty late in the night.
Saturday Dec 21, we drove another 10 hours and arrived our cabin about 6pm after ski rental and groceries. Our lunch stop was at Santa Rosa. We did McDonald's drive through again. Our cabin owner was super nice. She kept in touch me ever since I reserved this cabin with her two years ago. She sent me email and videos of the cabin. I had a good idea of what the place looked like. We were all impressed with the place when we got there. It has three bedrooms and a high ceiling living room facing San Juan River. The view from the living room is spectacular and 360 degrees. We also had our long drive way and tons of leftover snow for the kids to build their own ski hill.
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| Beautiful tree in our side yard |
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| Jackson and Norah's private sledding hill |
Sunday Dec 22, we stayed at Lynx chair to warm up and to assess both kids' skills for the next day's ski lesson. We enjoyed skiing together as a family.
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| Kids were skiing by themselves on Lynx chair |
Monday Dec 23. Both kids signed up for a 2-hour ski lesson and we got to ski by ourselves for a little while! Norah graduated from level A to level B. Jackson staying at level C to C+. He still needs to learn hockey stops. Most important change was Norah learned snow plow! She could go to different places with us now. After ski class, we headed to the base cafeteria and the line for food wrapped out of the building. No table could be found. Both kids melted down at this point. We struggled to get them to the top of Raven chair to avoid the crowd. It was much easier after the break and we all skied till 4pm mountain closed.
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| Snowball fight |
Tuesday Dec 24. We decided to take an off day after two days of skiing. A very good decision so both kids could rest and nap. We went to the hot spring for the morning. And I got one more person hooked to the hot spring experience. Norah didn't want to leave the comfy pool of 100-102 degrees. When we drove back, we saw a sign at the community pond that said there would be a skating party on the rink at 2:30.
After the kids napped, we headed to the pond with the skates Will bought/rented for us during their nap time. There were three to four local families there already when we got there. Ice skating on a nature pond is so much more romantic in concept than reality. The entry way was sloped and ice surface was very rugged. I moved extra slowly and couldn't skate even after I got to the pond. There were soft patches on the ice that stops the skate movement.
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| Skating on a natural pond |
The families were very friendly with us. We exchanged stories about how we each discovered this little gem of San Juan River Village. The women of these groups even invited me to do Christmas Carol with them the next day. We've never been so close to people who live local. And this made our stay extra special. It started to snow hard at this gathering. It's going to be a white Christmas!
Wednesday Dec 25. Santa came by and dropped off the gifts under our tree. He dropped 12 inches of snow overnight too. This storm added 27 inches of snow to Wolf creek. Powder was so thick that Norah struggled the whole morning. She was freezing and constantly stuck. Luckily sun came up in the afternoon and our family skied to the last ski run again.
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| Let it snow, let it snow |
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| Santa's gifts |
Thursday Dec 26. This was our favorite ski day. Plenty of powder and sunny, it was a blue bird day. Norah tried her first blue run and Jackson his first black run today. Jackson requested to stay in the cabin for a whole year to experience all four seasons. He claimed this was the best vacation ever.
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| Charisma - Norah's first blue run |
Friday Dec 27. We took another day off to sled in Pagosa Spring Reservoir Hill Park. We had fun flying off the ridge on our day down the hill. In the afternoon, another snow storm came in. Will went to the resort during their nap time to fix his ski thirst.
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| our breakfast view |
Saturday Dec 28. Snow was coming down hard this morning. Wolf Creek got another 27 inches of snow. We would have been thrilled about this 54 inches of powder but as parents, we wished for the sun. It was frigidly cold (~10F) and snowy. Norah had a hard time to find a comfortable state to continue skiing. This was also the most crowded day we have been here. We parked much further at 8:46am than the other days at 9:30am.
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| Frozen II |
Sunday Dec 29. We started drive 8:28am. After 5 pit stops and no meal stop, we arrived home 10:10pm. Total drive time was 12 hours 6 minutes, actually time was 12 hours 42 minutes adding the stops. Google predicted 12.5 hours of drive time. Both kids did remarkably well.
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| Our backyard |
This trip lasted 9.5 days with 7 days of activity time. We liked the length of this trip. For reference later, 7-8 days of activity time should be the optimum length of our ski trip.
Notes: Jackson was in 100cm ski. Norah was in 76cm ski.
Jackson skied the following black diamonds Gun barrel, Alberta Face, Scat.
Jackson's ski school rating was "C+" level, the only item missing to "D" level was hockey stop, which was noted as "almost". Norah's ski school rating was "B" (probably). These levels aren't the same as school grades ;-).
