Wednesday we spent the day flying to Idaho Falls, Idaho. It was a long, grueling day of travel but in the end we landed and I was shocked... I do mean shocked by the beauty I saw all around us. I have never seen that much snow in my life... I mean over 7 feet on the roofs... everywhere you saw white. Once we landed we had a 2 hour drive to our hotel and final destination. This wouldn't have been a big deal except for the fact that a blizzard was settling in at the same time as we started driving up the mountain. But 4 hours and several family wide meltdowns later we arrived safely at our hotel and eagerly settled in. Thursday morning we woke early, had an amazing breakfast and got our snow mobiles. There was a huge sense of anticipation as we stood there in our snow gear staring at these huge, powerful machines. We were overjoyed and amazed that someone was just giving us the keys and showing us what direction to head and letting us go!!! We didn't go into Yellowstone on Thursday. We went up into the mountains and did some back trails. Steve and my brother both had the more powerful sleds that could glide over powder and didn't need to stay on the trail. It was so much fun but wasn't without it's "moments". None of us had ever snowmobiled before... as we started out it was slow going. I've never seen forests like this, snow like this or driven something like the snow mobile. I loved it!!! In seconds you would have ice crusted on your eyelashes, eyebrows and in Steve's case beard. It was invigorating and challenging at the same time. About 2 hours into our day Steve and Drew decided to go off and explore off trail. It didn't go so well :) Here's a video of me and my mom explaining what happened!
And then here is Steve explaining in his own words what happened... honestly I still laugh every time I see this and I've seen it about 15 times :)
After that experience we all had a rough hour. It was snowing and cold, we hadn't eaten in awhile and it all started to get to us. But Dad navigated us to a lodge in the mountains where people stopped to eat while they were out riding. We were able to get lunch and thaw out a bit. After that it was smooth sailing. We had so much fun flying down the paths, racing and just taking in the sites. Here are some pictures from the rest of the day!
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| at the lodge half way... yeah we were all beat! |
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| mom |
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| the boys at the end of the day! |
love to all!
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