Tahoe Trip - Part One: Crackpots In The Snow

On Tuesday, December 29th we packed up our things, loaded up all three cars, and headed out to Sacramento to pick up the M family and my Grandma at the airport.  From there we were on our way to Lake Tahoe.  The snow was amazing when we arrived.  The base was a several feet thick and the top powder was as fine as powdered sugar.  Arrow went nuts, as usual, when we pulled onto our street in Tahoe.  He knows exactly what is coming when we make the final turn.

We took a few minutes to unpack, figure out all the new features of the house (steam showers, heated floors, gas fireplace, chef's kitchen) before snapping some pictures.

This is the view off of the top deck.

Darkness came not long after we arrived on Tuesday and we spent some time in the hot tub before retiring for the night.

Wednesday morning was just as beautiful and I promised Arrow that we would spend some time out in the snow.  Here is how Arrow spent about 5 hours on Wednesday.

Arrow has not played with his frisbee or ring for several months due to his polyarthritis.  But since he is now in remission, we let him play as much as he wanted.  He was rather sore the next day, but recovered quickly.  For a dog that has grown up seeing snow only once or twice a year, he is absolutely at home in the snow.

While Arrow had frisbee fun, Rick and Rich (the M guys) and I went sledding.  Well, Rick refuses to acknowledge that what we did was sledding because he couldn't find an American Flyer sled anywhere, just the plastic ones.  The house is built into the side of a hill with the garage at street level, the first floor below that, and the lower floor below that but still above ground level.  As you can see, this made for a wonderful sled run.  Rick and I put on snowshoes and crunched down a line of snow for the "sled" to follow.

The walk back up the hill was exhausting.  As you can see here, Rich took his jacket off after trudging the hill a couple of times.

For dinner we enjoyed spending a long time together in the kitchen making a gourmet salad and steaming the tamales that the M family brought with them from Texas. It was great to see all of these people I love in the kitchen together.

After dinner we jumped in the hot tub with some brandy and then went to bed, eager to head out the next day for a snowmobiling adventure.