The Great Outdoors

This was my favorite part of the entire vacation (lee). It was so breathtakingly beautiful up in the canyon with all of the freshly-fallen snow. The best photos don't really do it justice either.

We found a young moose while snow mobiling up the canyon 

We think this is a mink. Scott took this photo as we were stalking down the young moose.  Scott was being very quiet and the mink came out its hole enough to get a great photo. Nice!

Here is the same moose but I found it while snowshoeing. We were worried that the mom might be nearby but we never saw her.

Here we were shoe-shoeing up by the Palisades Reservoir and we saw a mom and baby moose. The baby darted away and the mom turned to watch us as we walked by. It was a tense moment because moose are known to be very defensive.

We had a fun time snowmobiling around southern Afton. There are miles and miles of trails, many of which are very steep. Austin had to do some heavy lifting getting us all unstuck. 

This is the parking lot where the trail starts. Notice the hill off to the left that people drive up!

More powder!

Little Eva didn't like the cold very much.

Here I am trying out my fancy new tripod that Santa brought me. 

Intermittent Springs. The spring had just turned on and if you look carefully you can see the steam rising up off the water.  Afton pipes this spring water to the local homes. Delicious!

Bo and I went snowshoeing up to the top of the springs.

The view from the top. You can see that by the time we made it to the top that the spring had turned off. It cycles about every 20 minutes in the winter.

Estee went up to the top with me.

Austin and Cydnee came up too. We had a ton of fun bounding down the mountain. I definitely endorse snowshoeing if you have the opportunity to try it. 

I decided I wanted to snowshoe from the cabin to the springs and back just to prove to myself that I could do it. Here I am exhausted at the top of the springs (yeah, only half way). It ended up being about a 10 mile hike. Listening to Harry Potter helped keep me from thinking about how tired I was.

Everyone wanted to take a go at hiking up to the springs. Everyone else had the brains to snowmobile to the base of the climb and hiked from there. 

Lots of powder.

All packed up and ready to head home.