Christmas in January, Sleigh Rides (Sort Of), and Elk (and Deer)

Morning came on January 23rd, and instead of pinching myself, I checked outside.

Yep!  I'm not dreaming!  How blessed am I?  I'm in a beautiful cabin in the beautiful mountains of Idaho about to celebrate Christmas in January with my beautiful family.  Wow.  Thank you, God.

We decorated our tree the night before and sneakily put presents under it after the girls went to sleep.

Everyone gave gifts this morning, including Hopers, who gave us all a smile over her fantastic morning hair-do.

The girls helped Steve open his new gun.

After gifts and breakfast, we hurried back outside to play in the snow again and find the perfect tubing hill.  We found it.  Somewhere near the ninth hole of the Meadow Creek Golf Resort is a hill that became our playground.  We only had about two hours to sled before our next scheduled adventure, so we got right down to business.


So much snow to eat.  So little time.

...the business of tubing, I mean.

We made quick work of our fun and then jumped in the truck with Nanabanana and Steve.  They were taking us to the nearby town of McCall to go on a sleigh ride to see wild elk.  Exciting!!

We drove through McCall, enjoying the sights of giant ice sculptures being prepared for the upcoming winter festival.  Many people had them in their yards and businesses.  Suddenly we noticed several mule deer in the front yard of an empty vacation home.  In true tourist form, we stopped the truck and hopped out with the camera. 

Strangely, they just sat there, staring at us. We walked closer and closer.

The closer we got to them, the more deer appeared. Curious.

There were somewhere between seven and ten deer hanging out in the yard. We even saw footprints in the snow leading up over and across someone's roof. So funny!

We arrive at our destination: the middle of nowhere outside of McCall.  Perfect place for a sleigh ride though!

The sleigh ride proved surprising.  It was a sleigh, but it was also a hay ride.

It was advertised as "an hour-long sleigh ride" but the "ride" part was only about 5 minutes total.  The rest of the hour we sat in the sleigh watching the elk and listening to the guide.  Nanabanana thought that was "funny" (not really).

But the elk part turned out to be really, really cool.  Yes, we knew we were going to see some elk.

But this close??

How about this close?

Or this close?

The elk in this herd are wild, but they have been coming to these feeding grounds for generations.  They are comfortable with a sleigh sitting in their midst.

Especially if it's made of food.

Did you notice how huge they are?? The one's head is as big as Noodle! And it's a baby!

We were allow to talk and move a little as long as we didn't touch the elk or disturb them.  They were allowed to touch us, however.  I was sneezed on three times--big, sloppy, wet sneezes.  Ew.  Seth got nudged in the back for a while by the antlers of a bull that was eating behind him.  Hopers wasn't too keen on having them eat her seat.

Seth was really impressed by the males. He took lots of pictures of them.

So even though some parts of the sleigh ride weren't what we though they would be, other parts definitely exceeded our expectations.


Amazing day? Check.