Into the Idaho Mountains

It was day four of our trip, and so far, we still hadn't spent much time tooling around Boise.  This day wasn't any different.  We packed up (some of) our suitcases again and headed to the mountains.

As you can see on the map, Boise (marked by the lowest pin) sits in a valley just on the edge of lots and lots of mountains.  We had the opportunity to see them, all serious-like, from a distance around town.  In Emmett, we crept much closer, taking "the lean-y roads" as Hopers likes to call the switchback roads that go up and down the elevations.

Saturday, though, turned out to be much more friendly with the mountains.  Much more up close and personal.  Like best friends.  We were heading to New Meadows, and to Aunt Toni and Uncle John's cabin (top pin).  They graciously gave us a vacation-within-a-vacation to spend an entire five days of hanging out with mountains, snow, and cold weather.  For three days, Nanabanana and her husband Steve were staying also.  They had lots of surprise fun in store for us, too.

The weather proved to be very interesting on the drive up to New Meadows.  At times, the fog was so thick, one could hardly tell which way was up.

Then, in other areas, the sky would suddenly seem to break into a beautiful song, acting as if the gray had never existed.

Fortunately, the cabin was nestled in a sunny hillside....under several feet of snow.  That's the fortunate part!

We immediately threw our bodies out of the vehicles and into the powdery white stuff.

After making a few snow angels, the girls realized the back steps were a slide.  Cool!

Then, we stopped for a bite to eat.  We already knew the "don't eat the yellow snow" rule, but we eventually had to institute the "don't eat snow off of side walks" and "don't eat snow with strange particles it it" rules, too.

I had to try it out too.



Then it was snow ball time....



"Here, my darling, let me show you how to make a snow ball."






"No!  Wait!  You were supposed to throw it at Daddy!!"





"Alright, then I'll throw one at Daddy!"







"No cameras were harmed during the making of this snow ball fight. (Only Daddy.)"

 Next on our to-do list was to find a good hill for sledding and tubing.  Steve had brought up five large truck tubes for us to ride, and there was a sled in the garage at the cabin.  Now we just have to find the right place....

This looks like a good spot--just across the street from the cabin.

Puuuuuusshh!  Okay, not a good spot.

Well at least there's plenty of snow to eat.

The sledding hill had to wait, because it was time for the next item on the agenda: finding a Christmas tree.  I know what you're thinking though.  Hello?  It's January?  Yes.  But.  We were having our very own celebration of Christmas with family we don't normally get to celebrate with. AND we were having a white Christmas!  Ha!  Anyway, no one reeeally knows for sure when the exact date of Jesus' birthday is, right?  It could have been on January 22.

But since this day was January 22, and Christmas tree sales are usually pretty low around this time, we had to go get a real tree.  From a real forest.

Fortunately (my word of the day), Steve's cousins live nearby on many, many acres, and have granted us permission to take one of theirs.

Fortunately, we didn't even have to cut one down.  Cousin Jesse had stuck his chopped-off Christmas tree out in the snow by his house and it still looked awesome.

Fortunately, Cousin Jesse also had an awesome sledding hill next to his house, and fortunately, we happened to bring our tubes with us.

Yesss!!  First tubing experience!  Unfortunately, Noodle's first tubing experience involved slamming off of a large pine tree on her tube before we tried out the tree-free hill.  Oops.  While I don't have a video of that, I do have one of what happened after the crying stopped.  It's called fun.



We finished off the visit chatting with Steve's family about their herds of Icelandic ponies and goats and checking out Cousin Jesse's super cool glass art seen here.  Nanabanana and I both came away with handmade glass necklaces.  Wow.  What a day! Could tomorrow get even better?  You bet.