Week 2 of Christmas Vacation

And it's raining again.

It had stopped raining for 2 days but the rain is back.

I took advantage of the non-rain day to decide to take the kids sledding. After the rain, the smog clears and you can SEE. Really see. snow capped mountains on the horizon. And we'd gone to one of those 2 years ago and it was fun (well.. for the kids) and I said 'ok, today we're going sledding' and made the 2 hour preparation hunting up appropriate clothes and a change of dry ones to go.  Had to explain to Kayla that a summer weight dress without tights or leggings is a poor choice of clothing, to Sonia that shoes with holes in them is not a good idea and to Joey that shorts are not appropriate for winter if we're sledding or not.

Good grief. They've been here 2 years. No wonder 2nd and 3rd generation southern Californians seem to have no sense of winter.

So.. with the truck packed with sleds, snow chains (which we have now) and a tow rope (because if you have it with you, you won't need it) we headed to the nearest mountain which is about 45 minutes away.

Get to it's base, look up and say... 'uh.. where's the snow?!'

It appears the snow capped mountains were not our local mountain. Of course the BIG mountain 2.5 hours away has ski resorts and such that the Hollywood types frequent but the thought of driving 5 or more hours for 2 hours of snow made me decide to aim for the mountain that appeared closer..

yes. that would have been appeared.

So you see.. on the map it LOOKED closer. However, that was how the crow flies. I didn't account that the road I took for 20 miles had stop lights every few feet and a speed limit of 35 mph for many of those miles.

I also didn't account that the road that looks like a straight shot to the mountain in fact circled round to the otherside and to that base and then wound up the side of it.

And I didn't realze all this because
a. since getting GPS's we don't have paper maps in the car anymore. Well. actually I think we have one of the mid Atlantic states, but last my geography was checked that would do me zero good these days.

b. my GPS is broken. And telling it "find me the top of the mountain" was never it's strong suit. Sure it could get you to a Mc Donalds after routing you past 4 other Mc Donalds, but to what you really wanted to go to if you didn't have a street address..no so great. But now it can't do anything. My bad luck with GPSs could be a whole blog post. The GPS I am returning today is our 7th GPS, I think. We had a Magellan which stopped working and was returned. Followed by our second Magellan which we loved and despite the disintegrating power cord it worked fine. Til the slime bags stole it from our car. They forgot the power cord to it. We have a momento of the only GPS we've owned that worked. It was also stolen with the new GPS we'd gotten for my car which we'd had for 2 weeks and for those 2 weeks it had worked. (so far that's 3) replaced those with 1 really cheap Magellan which will route you through a parking garage and through 5 u-turns to get you where you want to get but will get you there 55% of the time. The other was replaced by the same model as was stolen. It stopped working 3 weeks into having it. It went back. (that's 5) Decided we'd try Garmin since our luck with Magellan was 1/5 working well. Couldn't hear the darn thing over the kids. at full volume. It went back. (6)  And now unhappy and unlucky #7 is destined to go back to the store exactly 1 week into it's use.

No, I don't care the box says to not return it to the store I bought it from. Because if they're going to have me send it back and send me a refurb one that's going to stop working within weeks and not be covered under warranty I'm going to let the store send it back and give me my money back and start the hunt for a new one all over again. So far I never have been hassled. We'll see how today goes. I learned about the "replace with a refurb one when dealing with manufacturer tech support" with the Kid's brand new Leapster. I was insanely annoyed with that lesson but I haven't forgotten it.

So anyway... back to our mountain adventure...

I have a Map with some Routing features on my phone. So I planted a pin on top of the mountain and told it to route me there.

I should have thought about it and realized.. perhaps there isn't a road there.

Not to worry.. Google Maps can route you there. Through a campground and up a logging trail.

Which was probably last used for logging in the 1800s. So I got 1/3 up the trail (and yes, it's name was S103 trail) and with the recent rains huge portions of the back top (or what had been blacktop) had been washed away. Now mind you with our 4 wheel drive, tire chains and tow rope I wasn't feeling terribly secure sliding up the hill with a rather steep decline off the side of the trail. And it was about wide enough for a Hyundi. And Heaven help me trying to back down that trail if I met another vehicle.

The snow line was about 6500 feet which explains why we didn't have snow here- our mountain tops out about 6100 feet.

So we gingerly turned around at a somewhat level clearing with the kids loudly protesting that the snow was further up the mountain. Well.. there was some patches were we were- just not the 2 feet deep fluffy stuff- more like the once melted and re-frozen into crusty ice patch. And that was what they sledded on. It was fast. They crashed and cried. They went through every.single.pair of gloves we had in 1 hour because they didn't care for their hands being cold and wet. So about 1.5 hours into the snow adventure they were restless. They wanted dry gloves and more snow. They'd tried a snow ball fight. Well,.. yes.. when it's ice it hurts when you hit each other with it. They had to learn that the hard way. And in case you're feeling bad for them -the outside temp was 50 degrees. It wasn't like it was COLD. They just thought it was. Heaven help us the first year we move back to winter and they try to go out to play in the snow. I fondly remember being a kid and coming in and the pain of the toes and fingers thawing... ahh the fond memories of frostbite.. All that my kids are missing.,

So,... with no further ramblings- or more accurately- the kids have stopped playing nicely together- I am now off.

With a few pictures from today as soon as I unearth the camera

So we were coming down the mountain and saw this windmill farm. I bet you could put that to music.