WINTER WONDERLAND

Living in a place like San Francisco, you start to forget about the change in seasons. The temperature only fluctuates a few degrees all year and we waver between rain and fog. It's funny how events start to run together in your mind as a result. You don't have those cues in nature helping you mark the passage of time. So, it's nice to get out of the city and spend some time in a place like Tahoe that really seems to showcase each season at it's best. I fell in love with it over the summer and despite my sincere dislike of cold temperatures, I was just as mesmerized by it's beauty in the winter.

I went up with friends for the weekend. They went snowboarding, but I chose not to 1) because I'm pretty much guaranteed to injure myself due to my lack of natural athletic ability and 2) as I said earlier, I avoid the cold almost entirely, have no snow gear, and by the time I rented it all, paid for the ski pass, etc. it would make for an expensive weekend. Fortunately, Mark didn't feel like snowboarding either, he has access to free snowshoes, and he knew of some great trails to check out. So, we set off on a completely new adventure for me. Despite the crowds of people in town to ski, the trail we were on was deserted. It was so quiet up there, absolutely untouched by man and gorgeous. We hiked for awhile and then found a good spot for a picnic overlooking the mountains and the forest and enjoyed the day.

We did have a brief scare when he dropped my camera bag (thank goodness it wasn't my camera) into a little pond about 3-4' down from the trail. In his efforts to retrieve it (which were quite entertaining), he ended up falling in, but fortunately the water was only a few inches deep and his boots were waterproof. So, frostbite was avoided and the bag was saved!

The rest of the weekend was spent enjoying good food with our friends at the cabin, spending some necessary time in the hot tub with the snow coming down above us, exploring the area a bit more, and much, much, too much time in the car trying to get there and back. Word to the wise- leave Friday morning and don't come back until Monday.