Cross-Country Ski Lessons

We're officially trying to embrace the colder months of the year!

A quick backstory - for Christmas 2013, we bought my mom the perfect present - a guided snowshoe tour on Mt. Hood! She was due to visit in February, it was going to be so pretty up on the mountain in the winter, we'd never been snowshoeing but always wanted to, there was a historic lodge up there, etc. However, when she arrived in Portland, a big snowstorm came with her...and our snowshoeing trip was cancelled. Because of too much snow. (Portland doesn't have salt or many plows...) So for this past Christmas, we thought we'd try again. There are lots of places around Cleveland that have snowshoeing hikes. We found one for January 3rd and thought - perfect! But, of course, there wasn't any snow on January 3rd. But Cleveland's winter didn't disappoint and soon enough there was (is) tons of snow. So we took cross-country skiing lessons together!

We learned how to fall down - and get back up, how to go up and down hills (the hill above was our practice hill!) and then we skied around a short track through the forest. By the end of it, we all felt like we were really starting to catch on! We're hoping to go back again soon, this time just to rent skis, and practice more. You might see the strands of lights above - the trails are open until 9pm! 

We passed snowshoeing trails (definitely going back for that) and there was even a nice fire waiting for us back at the lodge when we were done! Maybe winter isn't so bad after all...