So in case you haven't heard, Colleen and I are moving back to Boise next month. We're not sure on the exact date, but we're trying to shoot for March 7. Pretty sweet, huh? This morning we were eating breakfast and getting ready to go to work, Colleen worked at the candlemakers today and I was going to our regular job when our boss called and said to take the day off. It sucks, but I went out and had some fun, kind of. I threw my pack together and made a sandwich and threw the skis I'm borrowing into the car and took Colleen to work and then I drove to Minekill State Park, which is a place I had been hiking to back in October. I had heard that they had groomed trails there, and on our property here there's only so many times you can go skiing before it all starts looking the same. I parked at the NY State Power Authority Station which is about 1 mile up the road from the park entrance. There's a trail that starts there, and I was planning on doing about 8 miles round trip. I park the car, grap my pack, put the ski boots on and grabbed the skis and walked to the trailhead. Then I discovered that the trails aren't groomed, and it didn't look like anybody had been skiing there for the past week or two. It hasn't snowed here since Friday, so I didn't even have old ski tracks to follow. I started to break the trail, made it the mile to the park entrance and past the Ranger Station, breaking trail the whole way. I got to the next trail that I was going on, that would take me the next 3 miles to a waterfall that I had hiked to before only from a different direction. I discovered this new trail started out going downhill on a pretty steep slope surrounded by trees, and I"m not quite good enough yet on the skis that I was afraid if I tried I'd end up wrapped around a tree. I took the skis off and walked down until it was flat. Put the skis back on once it got flat again, and went maybe 1/2 mile before the trail started to slope upwards, again with a really steep incline. I was tired, and I wanted to continue, so I took the skis off and strapped them to my pack, then continued on my way. I made it about another 1 1/2-2 miles on the trail that varied from flat to uphill, trudging through foot and a half deep snow before I threw in the towel before I had a heart attack. I stopped and took a rest, then threw my pack back on and went back the way I came, walking the whole way until I got back to the ranger station and the flat ground before I could ski again. I had alot of fun and got a great workout, but they shouldn't mark a trail as a ski trail unless you can actually ski on it. Jerks. Here are some pictures. If you go back to my posting from October 12th, you can get an idea of how much the mandscape changes in winter.
The above photo was taken from about the same point on the trail where I had taken one back in October when I was there. 
This is a really big tree that had fallen over and about half of it was hanging over a stream about 20 feet down. It was pretty neat.
I don't know if you can see these that well, but all those little dark spots are turkeys. I took this as I was about to pull in our driveway, and there were hundreds of them in the field across the road. Well, that's all for now. Bye
