Sledding and swimming

I'm back! We ended up spending the night at a place called Kahneeta that had hot springs mineral pools. Quite a nice treat after a chilly day on Mt. Hood. I even got writing done!!!!

Here's a trip report:

We arrived at Snow Bunny Sno-park on Mt. Hood around eleven. The drive took us longer than we expected due to having to put chains on. Highway 26 was a sheet of ice. The temperature was a cool 28 degrees with snow falling from the gray sky. A brisk wind blew, making it feel colder than it really was, but the four inches or so of fresh powder on the sled hill more than made up for it.

Very few people were there when we arrived. The kids (ours and another family who joined us) couldn't get enough sledding. Well, all the kids except our youngest. The wind and the snow hitting her face were a bit much. I dragged her all over the sno-park in her little baby-boggin, but that only made things worse. She hated the cold, the snow, the sled, everything. She said she wanted to go home. Now. And she never, ever wanted to go skiing.

I handed her over to hubby so I could sled a time or two. He took her down the hill, too. But she was so miserable I finally took her back to the minivan. Once inside she was back to her normally happy self. She ended up falling asleep, and I spent the next two hours in the front seat working on the book.

Her reaction was a one-eighty from our sledding trips last year. I know the weather was the biggest factor, but I also realized that my dream of having all five of us on skis this season wasn't going to happen. She's just not ready even though she'll be four in a couple of weeks and old enough for ski school. Picture me totally bummed.

As hubby and the kidlets continued sledding, the parking lot got really crowded and so did the hill. At one point the kidlets moved to a smaller hill and were rolling down sans sled. Luckily we only had one instance of blood (lip) and somehow the same kidlet ended up with scratches under his left eye. He has no idea how he did that, but I'm sure the many face plants had something to do with it.

Instead of going home after sledding, we followed our friends to Kah-nee-ta where hubby had booked us a room for the night. Kahneeta is a resort near Warm Springs. As soon as Rose saw the pool, she perked up. The warm mineral water was a perfect escape from the 38 degree temperature.

The pool was perfect for the kidlets with a shallow end where even the littlest one could touch bottom and go on a small slide by herself, a deep end with lap lanes for me and a huge slide for hubby and the other two kids. No one wanted to get out, but we had dinner reservations. All of us crashed by nine-thirty.

After breakfast, I stayed in the room and wrote while everyone went back to the hot springs. We headed home, happy that we didn't have to chain up and relieved we weren't in the line of traffic heading up to Government Camp.

I'll post the page tally after I have a chance to figure it all out or just wait until tomorrow. I still have some work to do tonight. I do know I revised 9 pages of Chapter 5 on paper and wrote two new scenes on my Alphie. Not bad for being away from home!