South Lake Tahoe!

This past weekend we took a weekend get-away with Mike, Laura and Mike's brother Derek to South Lake Tahoe!  We rented a cabin in South Lake Tahoe that had a hot tub and a nice fenced in yard for Alee and brought all the fixins for great home-cooked meals.  When we arrived Friday evening, they were getting 3 inches of snow per hour!  Luckily we had our Subaru so there were no concerns on our part, but we definitely saw lots of people struggling to get up the pass on the way there! On the way down we stopped at the Reno REI and saw they had some garage sale remnants left. (Because REI has a 100% no questions asked return policy, they sell their returned goods through a "garage sale" twice a year.)  Boy did we get lucky - Ed and I both got "almost-new" snowboarding boots for $9.95 each!

Saturday, before we headed to the mountain, we dropped Alee off at Tahoe Best Friends - a no-kennel doggie day care!  She started playing right away!

By about 9am we hit the slopes at Sierra at Tahoe - a resort with a nice variety of runs for all our skill levels.  Ed and I checked out the 2.5 mile long green run - Sugar and Spice.  There was 2 FEET of fresh powder on the grounds, so it made falling a little softer!  There were a lot of people falling down in the powder so by the afternoon the slopes looked like golf balls with little holes everywhere.

 The drive up - TONS of snow!

 The Slopes - heading to the top of the mountain

 On the lift!

Lake Tahoe in the distance

After a lot of falling and some pretty cool moves, we headed back to get Alee and go back to the cabin to make dinner - hamburgers, potato salad and Tres Leches Cake!  Of course we had to sit in the hot tub a little to start recovering...

 Alee helping to cook...

Relaxing!

Sunday the forecast was calling for heavy snow so we decided to head out a little sooner than expected.  There was so much snow we couldn't even see the lake, but we headed to a little park to try and get a group shot.  With so much snow there was no place to even rest the camera - so we have a "2 part" group shot!

 Alee was sad to leave the cabin...as we all were...

 Group shot Part 1...

 Group shot part 2 - even with Alee!

Cloudy and snowy Lake Tahoe

We said good bye to Derek in Reno after a fantastic lunch at the Wild River Grill and then finally headed back to Klamath Falls on perfectly dry and clear roads.  Great weekend!

Another Fun Weekend!

Since our last post we took 1 rainy weekend off to relax and clean house and prepare for the next several snowboarding weekends!  This past weekend we started off with the Run for the Music 5K!  This was a local K-Falls race to raise money for the music department at Klamath Union High School.  The high schoolers actually ran WITH their instruments!  (Although they didn't play them...)  It was quite fun watching 3 band students running while pushing a "mock" piano down the road! (not the real piano thank goodness!)  We didn't get any photos since we were busy running (along with all our friends who ran it with us!) BUT I pulled this from the local running group's blog:

 One of the students carrying a tuba...

We ran with Mike, Laura and Mariah: Mike impressed us all with his time around 28 minutes! Laura came in behind him at 30 minutes, Ed made a new PR with 31 minutes and Kristin and Mariah did better than they expected at 38 minutes.  Not bad for very little running this winter!

After running our hearts out, we headed up to the WONDERFUL City of Bend on Saturday to enjoy some of the City that hadn't seen yet.  We checked out a local winery (Maragas Winery) who had a Pinot Noir that we loved!  They also had some fantastic Tapas food for gourmet snacking!  Next we let Alee play her heart out at one of the local dog parks before heading to our hotel with some great local pizza and a new bottle of that fantastic Pinot Noir. 

Sunday we dropped Alee off at Strutt Your Mutt for some back country hiking and headed to Mt Bachelor again!  Ed and I really got down our turns and switching from front edge to back edge.  With this under our belts we're ready for Tahoe next weekend!

Mt Bachelor and Hogsback again!

This past weekend we had many high hopes of hiking some of our unique volcanic peaks here in Southern Oregon, but unfortunately all the roads to get to the trailheads were snowed in...so we chose the old faithful Hogsback Mnt for Saturday with Mike and Laura.  When we arrived there were even some other pups there for Alee to play with!

Hiking around in the snow...

Alee!

"Lone Pine" at the top of Hogsback...well...near the top at least!

Alee and the other pups fighting over a stick!

My good lookin' husband!

On Sunday we headed to Mt Bachelor again for more FREE snowboarding!  We started learning to link our turns where we switch from front edge to back edge without stopping...lots of falling, but we're getting it!

Ed and I showing off our new goggles from Sierra Trading Post (super discounted!)

The Mountain Crew!