The Big Snow

From Sledding 2

We’ve already had several snows this year as well as some really cold snaps of weather. This last week, we had the biggest snow we’ve had in years – enough for snowmen, and lots of good sledding. It started with freezing rain and sleet and then we had 6-8 inches of snow on top of that. By late Friday night, we had a good build up of snow and Jeremy and Jonathan and I headed out to get in some good sledding. We don’t have any sleds, so we got several from Jeremy’s mom and from my parents as well. It was actually a great opportunity to test out a bunch of different sleds and who would have known that the simplest/cheapest sleds worked out the best.

First we started with Joe Fred Starr drive and when that didn’t prove to be steep enough, we headed up to the top of Mt. Sequoyah to sled down the back side of  Rockwood. It was a blast and we got up a lot of speed in some luge-like tracks that I laid with the ‘taco sled’. We even got to racing each other and as I’m sure you know competition makes most things more fun. We sled into the dark hours of the evening and then finally headed home.

Saturday morning we got up early for more sledding and the temperatures were quite a bit colder than the evening before had been but we at least had the sun to warm us. We sled down Rockwood again for quite some time and some neighborhood kids even joined in. With the snow more packed down, the rail sled was easier to use than it had been the night before, so after I tried it out it ended up being my sled of choice for the morning. I actually managed to get it going really fast and pick up a lot of speed on my way down. I wish I’d hooked Cabela up to it with her sledding harness to see how fun that was. I’m pretty sure if you took her to one side of a field and she knew someone on the the opposite side had treats for her, we could get her going pretty fast, though I’m not sure if hills would be a good idea or not.

After we tired of Rockwood, we tried out a couple of hills nearby on Mt. Sequoyah but none were much to talk about. After that, we headed down town and tried out a hill near the square which was fun and then took a break for lunch and grabbed some fast food. Our last stop of the day was at Wilson Park and we stayed there for quite some time trying out a section of the hill with a ramp built. It was really fun and I enjoyed sledding down the hill as well as taking some pictures of Jeremy and Jonathan sledding. The park was absolutely packed with people – with cardboard boxes, plastic tupperware tubs, trash can lids, basically whatever they could find. It was so fun that Jeremy and Jonathan returned the next morning to sled some more.

After getting warmed up, we went to my parents for a while to return the sleds and I got a chance to sled some with my Mom and Lisa and some of Lisa’s friends. It was a really fun day and I’m glad we got a chance to really enjoy a nice snow since this may be our last snow for a very long time.

Here are some links to all of our pictures from the weekend of sledding:

Snow Day

Sledding 1

Sledding 2