We took a trip to the snow this weekend. I'm not exactly an adventurous winter person, so the planning caused some minor panic on my end and many duplicate online purchases of children's snow gear. Around noon on Friday, the day of our departure, you could find me aimlessly wandering around Nordstrom, looking for warm socks. After an iced tea and banana walnut muffin, I tried on these pants (which didn't look good on me), and left with a pineapple toddler swimsuit and a rocket ship baby sweatshirt.
With some major snowfall in Tahoe this winter, my husband and I had planned a trip to Northstar with law school friends for President's Day weekend. We booked this fancy pants condo for three nights and set about planning activities. Given that we have a baby and a toddler, we figured it wasn't realistic for us both to ski, which is why Northstar is ideal. The village has shopping, restaurants, and a movie theater, and quite frankly I'm way more into apres ski than actual skiing.
But logistics became too complex (why is it so hard to fly to Reno??) and our friends had to cancel. No big deal. We would just go ourselves.
We looked into Dodge Ridge as a Tahoe alternative. It's closer and family friendly, and oh wait, we took too long to reserve lodging and there was literally nowhere to stay. So we booked a room at the Christmas Tree Inn in Mi-Wuk Village. The Ritz Carlton it is not, but this basic motel was clean and perfect for our purpose, which had been downgraded to one day in the snow.
Anyway, here's how it went...
Four hours of driving, much of it listening to the Moana soundtrack. Toddler screaming, "I wanna see snow! I wanna eat a snack in the snow! That not Moana! You not the village chief!" Some of it listening to the Hamilton soundtrack, which was an interesting juxtaposition to Moana, given the Lin-Manuel Miranda constant.Halfway stop in Tracy, with dinner at the Black Bear Diner. Prior to stopping, clarified with my husband that this was dinner on my birthday, but not my birthday dinner. Language matters. This was actually quite a treat, because we had no idea which restaurants were on the way and had already resigned ourselves to a McDonald's meal.
Checked into the Christmas Tree Inn late, so didn't get to see the year-round Christmas display in lobby. There was, however, a charming picture of a raccoon over one of the beds.
Woke up on Saturday morning, and although Dodge Ridge was within driving distance, we set our sights on Leland High Sierra Snowplay as our first foray into winter activities with children. We purchased two hour snow tubing tickets, but half an hour would have been sufficient. Toddler had a blast.
Decided to drive through Yosemite on our way back home, then changed our mind. Arrived home around dinner time on Saturday.
Lessons learned...
Plan ahead, especially on President's weekend. Actually, we already knew this, but didn't execute well.
Go basic for a short trip. We only needed our motel room to sleep, so we saved a ton of money by staying somewhere simple. However, if we had friends coming in from out of state for the entire long weekend, our Tahoe option would have made more sense.
Yosemite is closer than I realized! I look forward to planning a trip just to go to the national park.
What I wore...
It was close to 60 degrees at the Christmas Tree Inn, and close to 40 at the snow park. Therefore, I ended up wearing an outfit I might wear on a walk to Whole Foods, and threw on some ski pants and boots at the snow park:
The North Face thermoball jacket, Lululemon leggings, The North Face ski pants, The North Face boots (similar here), hand knit Holy Cross hockey hat
And most importantly...
We all had fun, we got outside, we'll do it again next year :)
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