coldest vacation on record

Every year after Christmas and New Years we drive up to Snowshoe West Virginia to ski for a few days.  It's our time to celebrate Christmas, the New Year, my birthday and just to spend time alone and enjoy the peace after the holiday craze.  Joe mentioned on the drive up that this is his favorite trip every year.  Besides that it seems so soon after the holidays, we stay at the same condo where we can ski-in and ski-out, we don't go out to eat, we don't have to drive anywhere once we get settled, we are active everyday and we know what to expect while we are there.  In a sense it's stress free.  

We arrived at Snowshoe Resort mid-week during a arctic cold front with a whopping 6 degrees and windy.  Joe insisted on going to the village to go shopping and I wasn't all that interested.  I had to dress in so many layers that I was like the little brother on A Christmas Story.  I couldn't put my arms down.  After a purchase of a new beanie, which has almost become tradition we went back to eat dinner.  I checked the recent temperature and by 8pm the temperature dropped to -9 with the windchill at -34.  Holy crap!  We had planned for this to be a cold trip, but I don't think we realized it was going to be this cold.

Each morning we hit the slopes and never lasted more than 2 hours. We had to take early lunch breaks to warm up before we would head back out.  Who would want to be out much longer than 2 hours when the temperatures were below freezing and the windchill was a measly -5 to -36 degrees.  I mean good greif!  Freezing fingers, freezing toes, freezing face, freezing everything!  The first day out I brought my camelbak and after one swig of water the line froze.  That was an epic fail.  Our neck gators were causing our ski goggles to fog, so Joe headed straight to a shop to purchase new ventilated neck gators.  Not the most comfortable things, but they solved our goggle probably.

We had a mix of sunny and snowy days, but none the less it was no where near warm and everyday we had a negative windchill factored into it.  It was definitely the coldest ski trip on record for us.

On the third night we were woken up by the house phone at the wee hours of the morning.  It was our security company.  Guess who set off the glass break again!?!?  NORMAN I suppose. 3 out of 4 vacations it has been set off.  It's like the cats know and want to cause everyone anxiety including the house sitters.  So needless to say neither of us got much sleep after that call as we had to wait until morning to see what they did.  We thought we had cat proofed the house before we left, so both of us were baffled as to what could have happened.  The first time it was set off Norman knocked over a planter into the kitchen sink, the next time Norman knocked a small glass tree with glass wine charms off the bar and it shattered, this time there was nothing.  The cat sitter didn't find one thing.  We still think Norman is out for vengance or maybe he just likes watching the police walk around our house to make sure there is no burglar or broken windows.  I'm not sure, but they don't set off the alarm when we are in town...

On our last day of skiing we stayed out as long as possible.  After skiing we started to pack up for our morning departure.  Joe walked into the room where I was working on a suitcase and asked if I wanted to pack up and go home now?  I was like wow.  We both hadn't slept well the night before and I think we both knew that it wasn't going to be a good night sleep again.  All we would do is watch TV and pack-up, attempt to sleep and then drive home.  So why not just go home?  By 6pm we were on the road, trecked 6 hours home and made it around 12:30am.  We were both exhausted, but were happy to be home in our own bed.  I was surprised Joe was able to fall right asleep since he had 3 large cups of dark roasted coffee for the drive home.  AND so we will be home for awhile now...

Snow licking count Amanda - 0 vs Joey - 3

Dear hubby.  I've realized that our 6.5 year old little point and shot camera probably needs to be upgraded this year.  hint hint.