Hello, Spring!

Hi - I'm sorry I haven't been updating this blog. I have a few new pictures to put up, though. We took a few days off to catch the tail end of winter at Lake Tahoe. We stayed at a casino called Boomtown that is laid out like something out of the Wild West. There's an indoor area with mini-golf, rides, games, and of course, slot machines. Wini says the indoor pool was her favorite part of the place, but I would probably have to confess the dirt cheap rooms was what attracted me.

We spent Friday cross country skiing at a gorgeous site on top of Donner Pass called Royal Gorge. The staff all had accents - we think we heard Australian the most but there was at least one woman with a posh English PBS-type accent working the snack bar. There was so much snow, it was very nice snow for a full sunny day in Spring. Wini has never been on skiis so there was a little coaxing going on, but by the end of the day she was going down hills that I was too chicken to go down. I have to admit, the X-country ski confounds me a little. Your heel isn't attached in the back, so how do you do switchbacks down the mountain? Basically, you don't. You have to snowplow or just put them straight and go fast. Wini went fast.

But on flat surfaces, it was a blast! There's sort of a scissor motion you make with your legs that makes you gliiiiiidddde. It was a lot of fun.

The big vista view is overlooking Donner Lake. We went down by the lake the 2nd half of the day and skiied by the lake - frankly, the 1500 feet lower elevation really helped and we skiied farther even though the snow wasn't as good. At the top of the pass we were all getting dizzy!