Snow Day Fort

After a lovely and much needed 3 day weekend, Mother Nature graciously blessed us with an unexpected 4 day weekend! That's right, in Northern Virginia we have humid, bitter cold winters which can cause snow storms to turn nasty rather quick. I'm not trying to compare our winters to the ones in New England but they are of a similar nature albeit on a much subdued scale. All the same, the snow was scheduled to arrive mid morning on Tuesday and continue all day giving us about 3-8 inches of snow in Northern Virginia, DC and Maryland.

Tuesdays are my days to open bright and early at the fitness center at 5:45am so I woke up and drove all the way into DC (a solid hour commute both ways for those who are curious) and opened up for our faithful morning members. I'd received no word from my supervisors or building managers about snow closures. That is until 6:30 that morning. I got a phone call from a building manager saying they decided to close the building and that means the fitness center closes too and I should drive home safely before the snow hit. Well there were about 25 people in the fitness center (corporate wellness facilities are much smaller scale than commercial fitness centers) so I gave them an hour to finish up, shower and get out so I could drive my hour commute back home. Needless to say, I was a little upset they decided so late in the morning to shutdown.

After arriving home (finally) around 9am I got right to work on making this my best snow day since high school! Yup, my first snow day in 8 years. BYU didn't do snow days, much to my chagrin my freshman year of college when it snowed buckets and I thought, 'Surely they'll cancel classes!' Nope. Not a word was spoken and we all trudged to class, in the snow, uphills both ways, without shoes, the whole sad bit. But 8 years later, I finally got my snow day and I was gonna live it up like a kid. But first, I took a nap.

I awoke from my nap to see the first flakes of snow starting to fall. I was very excited as I love snow and I was ready for my snow day to officially begin! I went upstairs to make a kid appropriate lunch of Mac and Cheese. After lunch and clean up I really wanted to make a fort. Remember as a kid getting a bunch of blankets and collecting all the dinning room chairs into the living room and building stupendous blanket forts of great magnitudes that we stay in for hours? Well I do and I had great visions for this fort. However, as I've learned over the years, my visions of grandeur are always just that, too grand for this world so I had to down size a bit, plus, we didn't have enough blankets. What we did manage to put together was very satisfactory even if it was a tight fit for two grown adults.

Top view complete with books anchoring the blankets together.

You can see Scott's leg in khaki pants back there, proof that we spent time in here!

For the next several hours we played games and watch a Disney movie under those blankets and relived some of our childhood.

When playtime was over, we took down our snow day fort, folded the blankets and turned into adults again, sort of. We made tomato soup and grilled cheese for dinner then went outside in the wind and snow to shovel the driveway and stroll in the snow. What a great snow day!

The snow accumulation from our back door.

*Side note: Although we ate food worthy of a child's appetite we made gourmet versions to satisfy our adult taste buds. The Mac and Cheese was a Panera Bread copycat which I didn't think tasted anything like it but was still good. The soup was a tomato basil crockpot soup we love and I played around with the grilled cheese using gouda, provolone and american cheeses and added apples, onion jam (can be found at William and Sonoma) and ham but not on all the same sandwich. Delicious. Lastly I made personal Chocolate Molten Cakes for dessert. Just wanted to mention this because I really enjoy food. 

A Martin Luther King Day Hike

Happy New Year! As promised we are already doing better this year than last when it comes to writing here. I could stop now and still have written more than this time last year. However there is a purpose in writing today so let it commence.

Every January hundreds of thousands of people hunker down at their desks and put on their thinking caps and ponder where they'd like to see themselves in a year from now. Most of those people plan health and/or fitness related goals (I know this for a fact since I've seen about 120 new people in my fitness center every week since January 2). We too made some health and fitness related goals but not the general 'get fit and healthy' ones that the Regular Joe makes (ok, we did that too as a broad term).

No, our goal was much more specific. One, for example, is to run a marathon this year. (Historical Fact: A marathon is 26.2 miles being named from the Greek battle of Marathon where the message carrier ran to Athens from Marathon being 26.2 miles apart, with news the Greeks had won the battle and then he fell dead on the spot. Why then would thousands of people ever run a marathon? We're not sure but we'll find out for you. And since we figured we are 26 this year it would be rather poetic to run 26 miles.) Another goal is to hike at least once a month to complete all of the Appalachian Trail in the Shenandoah National Park and that is what brings us here today.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day Weekend started out very cold and windy in Northern Virginia. I had originally planned a training run for Saturday but after looking at the wind chill decided against it. Instead we decided to move our Monday hike to Saturday to begin our first hike in the Shenandoah National Park along the Appalachian Trail (AT).  After an hour plus drive to Front Royal, VA we entered the park and were promptly forced to turn around because the road was closed, I'm sure due to the snow accumulation they received further South. If there is one thing you should know about us is we are not easily deterred. Scott was very determined to begin our New Years Rez and had a back up plan. There was a small section of the AT leading into the National Park beginning on a state route which we quickly found.

We arrived, parked, bundled up, put on our packs and went forth into the great, white wilderness. The first portion was up a semi steep hill. It wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been the 6 inches of snow and the bitting winter wind determined to knock us over. We prevailed along that section of the hike and eventually found ourselves going downhill with the wind at our backs, a nice change of pace. We crossed a stream, two streams actually and wound our way along the AT headed for Shenandoah National Park.

Scott showing me we follow the White Trail Blazes.

We found a tree with a great natural den in the base, so I squatted down in it. Not comfortable or warm.

After about 1.5 hours, the tracks we'd been following turned off the trail (not that there was a path to follow really with all the snow). The footprints we had been using as our guide went right toward a shelter and bathroom facility but the white trail blazes continued to the left. Scott, with his new, barely broken-in hiking boots took this next challenge in stride and cut a nice path for me to follow in my mesh, snow sodden running shoes.

If you look really close in front of Scott, there are no footprints.

Another hour after trekking along in the forest we climbed some rocks and discovered a beautiful vista overlooking a valley of trees and hills. We knew we were close to the line separating private land and Park land but we didn't know how close. It only took about 20 steps later to find the plaque indicating that invisible line of demarcation. We had done it! We'd reached the summit and accomplished our first hike of the year along the Appalachian Trail. Now, to get back to the car.

"I knew we were close!"

Well, long story short, we arrived back at the car freezing, hungry, tired and wet about an hour and a half later. Some lessons we learned, one, wearing two pairs of socks isn't just a great way to fight off blisters but its also good for the cold, two, don't wear mesh sneakers during a snow hike and three, check the Park openings and closures before driving over an hour to hike especially in the winter months. One hike down and 5 miles along the AT, another 11 hikes and all of the Trail in the Park left to go!