Strange Days

     We have arrived home from our mini ski-cation with our local ski club.  The group that participated in this trip was fun for the most part, ranged in age from 11 months to 81 years old.  The venue was a small ski resort in West Virginia, which like the rest of us has experienced weird weather the past two winters, much too warm most of the time for natural or even man made snow.  We lucked out on a cold snap so every run on one of the small handful of open trails took you through the blast of tiny ice pellets of snow making, blinding you, even with goggles on and stinging any exposed skin, and there wasn't much of that.

     The high we experience over the 3 days was 8 degrees F.  The wind whipped up the only intermediate slope open and for the first two days we were there, they didn't move the snowmaking machines at all, so this morning, one of the trails we had skied on day one was literally knee deep in man made snow, so coming off of the wind blown upper part to the sheltered lower part of man made snow was a jolt.  On top of this blown snow, we got 3 inches of real natural snow overnight, making this morning's skiing a much different experience than the first two days, though not any warmer.  Because of the cold, we skied only for a short time each day.

     The evening of the first night, I dropped my cell phone in water, quickly retrieved it, opened the back and removed the battery.  Not having a bag of rice to put it in, I just wrapped it in a bath towel.  Since we didn't have any cell service anyway and since I did take my tablet for computer access, I didn't worry too much about it.  We have a spare phone at home for emergencies and I was prepared to have it reactivated if necessary.  It isn't necessary.  The phone seemed quite dry this morning and when reassembled and recharged, it seems to be working fine.  If it fails, I do have the fall back phone.

     Our return trip was over and through many mountain passes and lots of snow covered roads, but uneventful.  As we approached our home area, we see that the roads have all been pretreated in anticipation of tomorrow's snow event here at home.  We are really hoping this one doesn't leave us in the dark and cold again like last week's storm did, especially since there is again a huge basket of laundry and ski clothes to be washed, dried and repacked for the next ski-cation later this winter.

     It is strangely quiet in the house tonight as we arrived home too late to go get the pups from doggie camp, so we have no critters to bug us for attention and trips outdoors.