Snow Adventures

Shawn and I headed to the Cascade Mountains today. We got a slow start, though. As we were waiting for the gas tank to fill up, we realized that we weren't exactly sure how to get from our place to the Highway that we needed to take into the mountains. I thought we should go north, so we started out that way. After a couple exits, Shawn checked his Blackberry and realized we should go south, so we turned around. We passed our original exit, and after a few more exits, I realized that we'd forgotten our snowshoes at home. So we turned around again to get them.

So we wasted an hour, but we eventually got on our way. We went over Stevens Pass without any difficulty (only a little snow and not much traffic). We hadn't been to this area before, so we did originally miss our turn off and and had to turn around once. But then we found the trailhead pretty easily. The problem, though, was that the plow had only cleared one lane. It made a loop, so cars wouldn't get stuck, but there was nowhere to park. That didn't stop Shawn, though. It took him about half an hour of driving back and forth, but he eventually was able to use his car to create a parallel parking space. In the picture below, his left tires are basically on the line that the plow had created. We were very proud of his "plowing" abilities. :)

After parking, we got on our snow gear, put on our snowshoes, and hit the trail! This was Shawn's first time using the snowshoes I bought him for Christmas...he seems pleased with their performance. We didn't make it a very long hike, partly due to our rather late start, but we had a lot of fun enjoying the snow and this beautiful area of Washington.
After snowshoeing, we made a quick trip to Leavenworth. This town is a Bavarian Village...everything looks like it came straight out of Germany (even the Starbucks didn't have its normal corporate logo!). It was very pretty (especially with the Christmas lights still up), and I'd love to spend more time looking through all the little shops. But frankly...it was really cold! So after taking a quick walk through the town (and purchasing some fresh salami and a 1/2 pound of really good fudge), we decided to head home. But here's a pic of the downtown area!