Of SNOW! This place sure is fickle. Woke up yesterday to 5 inches of snow! Well with no school for Riley, and she and Abby playing wolf in the white blanketed playground at 7am in the morning, I decided the only thing to do was to head to the mountains. So we packed up and off we went to the Cibola National Forest.

We Parked at the Doc Long picnic area and were instantly excited and at peace at the inviting scene.

We were the only souls around, it was sooo quiet! We began looking for animal tracks. We discovered some unusal ones, two continuous straight lines side by side with a circle on either side every couple feet. We knew right away from our Alaskan experience that these were NORDIC SKI tracks! Cool.

I wandered over to a grove of Ponderosas and watched two big fat furry squirrels scamper up the majestic trees and jump from branch to branch. I couldn’t tell if they were worried about the all the noise and squeals the girls were making or if they were joining in the fun.

I turned around and found a patch of wild roses covered in last year’s rosehips. They were vibrant red against the snowy white background. I was enamored with the thought of all the medicine (mostly vitamin C) in those little hips still lingering on the now leafless bush.

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Since we didn’t find any animal tracks, the girls decided to make their own. Whadda ya know, snow angels!

We ended our outing with a warm soothing cup of hot chocolate at the local mountain coffee shop, Wooby’s!