Snow Shoes

Last Friday, I got myself a pair of snow shoes! I spent half an hour in the store, staring at all the different options, checked out another store, came back, and stared some more. So I went and found myself the 'resident snow shoe expert', who pointed out a pair and told me how easy they were to put on. He should have stopped there, but instead went on and demonstrated it to me on his own shoes. For at least five minutes, if not longer, he was standing there, struggling to put the darned shoes on, all the while explaining how easy it was. I told him that I could just see myself doing this with my baby in the sling.

He claimed it was because he was male and those were women's snow shoes... I asked whether he really was the expert? I ended up buying a different type of snow shoe for some reason :-) Spent more money than I had planned, but now have a pair of mountaineering snow shoes, with optional 8 inch tails. And I saved more money by buying the expensive ones, since they were all 20% off. So I would have saved less with the cheap snow shoes.

On Saturday, I had the opportunity to try them out, looking for an almost local cache. As in we had to drive less than an hour, which is pretty local, right?

One observation is that they are BIG! I immediately tripped over my own feet. It's not too bad to just walk, it was the manoeuvring around the car that was the pits. I had ski poles to help me stabilize, and I am so glad I used those. Otherwise I would have found myself flat on my fanny a few times I think.

It was a very beautiful pond, with people walking, sledding, cross country skiiing, and using snow mobiles on it. We would have had to walk around the pond for a bit, but now we could just walk over it. That was fun. The only thing less fun was that Sylvia insisted on no hat. And I kept dropping things. I did not enjoy picking up pole, after pole, after pole, hat, after hat, after hat, glove, after glove, after glove, and so on.

Sylvia 's hands were totally blue... That worried me for a few seconds, till I realized that she had eaten blueberries.

When I was starting to get really desperate, thinking we would NEVER find this cache, the batteries in my GPS ran out. Did I mention that I had forgotten to bring new ones? Luckily my friend had some new ones with her. Phew.

After all that, we didn't find the cache. Too much fluffy snow hiding all the hiding spots. We did enjoy seeing lots of beaver activity though. I didn't care much, it was too perfect of a day to care about not finding a cache. So much better than being stuck inside.

Cees is really pushing me to start getting ready for our caching trip to Texas. My lack of organizational skills has really held me back in planning for it. I would love to go, but I am so overwhelmed with the whole planning thing. So he is planning it now. Figuring out how much we can drive on a day. Finding fun things to do on the way. He even offered that he would help to clean out the van, since there is too much stuff in it to go on a long road trip now.

We'll camp once we are in warmer states. And on the way down, I am hoping that I can ask people for some floor space where we can camp out. But I am still so overwhelmed by the whole planning aspect of it. Strangely enough, the idea of the trip itself is not overwhelming at all, maybe because it's still so up in the air.