Jason and I try to make it to our timeshare in Midway once every winter. Sometimes it doesn’t happen but this year it did. Just a couple days before Christmas we took a break from the holiday hassles to enjoy the crunch of man-made snow under speeding inner tubes and the repose of an endless night of board games.
Jason and I never have to be convinced of the merits of going downhill fast.
Tubing entertained Isabelle for about an hour and a half and then she was no longer amused.
In keeping with tradition, we invited my brother’s family to join us on this outing. We started our getaway with an afternoon of sledding on the slopes of Soldier Hollow. Tubing went over far better with Drew’s kids this time than it did a couple of years back. Instead of disliking any rapidity, Isabelle alternated between demanding and detesting swiftness. Although she couldn’t decide if she wanted to go faster or slower, she handled the mountain mayhem relatively well. Jadon, the family chicken, surprisingly wasn’t intimidated by the hill this time; he particularly enjoyed racing down it. Even though he repeatedly insisted that his dad was the fastest sledder, experience proved otherwise. Drew failed to win any of our descent contests. Jadon eventually got wise and requested Jason as his racing partner, which resulted in an anticipated victory.
Jadon loved putting crusty chunks of snow in our inner tubes.
There’s never a dull moment with this boy.
After tubing we ate a yummy dinner at the Spin Café in Heber. This joint doesn’t look too impressive from the outside but the inside is cozy and the food is tasty. My favorite part of the meal was the candy cane chocolate gelato I ordered for dessert. The Spin Café makes their fantastic gelato in-house and I made a particularly excellent decision when I chose the candy cane flavor. Scrumptious!
Jadon thought getting served root beer in a cowboy boot was the height of sophistication.
We played a variety of games until 2:00 AM. Bananagrams turned out to be a little too extreme for Andrew. He had a wee meltdown during one round.
A night of intense board gaming later our quick trip was over. It was nice taking a breather from the all-consuming Christmas craziness. In just 24 hours we slid, gobbled, and gamed. Did I mention I lost at Sticheln? Such is the might of the mini-vacation!
The company that Jason works for holds their Christmas party each year in Disneyland. Every employee’s family is invited and the trip is completely paid for from airfare, to park passes, to rooms at the Grand Californian. Before you start saying your “no ways” let me assure you that I am not exaggerating or imagining. Feel free to begin muttering now about how your employer sucks.
Sleeping Beauty’s castle was all aglow with twinkling lights and fake snow.
Jason’s company hosted a lunch with yummy food and Disney characters one afternoon.
Since Jason switched jobs less than a year ago this was our first corporate Disneyland trip so we weren’t quite sure what to expect. Here’s the scoop on how it all went:
Weather: When the temperatures back home are in the 30s or 40s anything feels comparatively nice and 73 feels amazing! I wore shorts for nearly our entire vacation. Even when the sun went down and things got a little chilly I largely refused to cover my legs. After all, it’s not every day a Utah resident gets an opportunity to wear summer attire in December; chances like that are not to be squandered. One afternoon I even read a book by the pool in my tank top while the pervasive sunshine made me nice and sweaty. It was an unseasonal miracle. The only hint of winter’s presence during our trip was the darkness that hit suddenly every evening at 4:45. That premature setting sun made keeping track of time difficult but I was too overjoyed by the generally pleasant conditions to care.
Main Street was nostalgic and cheery.
Our hotel lobby was filled with a massive Christmas tree.
Parks: The Disney parks are always amusing that’s probably why they’re called amusement parks. We thoroughly enjoyed spinning on Space Mountain, shrieking on California Screamin’, giggling through the Pirate’s Lair, and plunging on the Tower of Terror. Jason and I have never been to Disneyland near Christmas so it was a treat to see Main Street decked like the halls and “it’s a small world” transformed into a winter wonderland. The Haunted Mansion Holiday, with its seasonal spook scenes, was Jason’s favorite out of all the rides we went on.
We scrambled around the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail until an accident involving my finger, Jeremy, ropes, and high speeds made a Band-Aid necessary. Blame shall not be placed here because it is clearly implied.
Silas loved this nameless dog.
Crowds: Saturday the masses were a mess. The rest of the time the hordes were manageable.
You’re never too big to ride a revolving sea creature.
I had a great time exploring the Pirate’s Lair with Milo and Silas.
Company: Jason works with a couple of our buddies, Jeremy and Adam, so they went to Disneyland with us. We screamed, laughed, and waited much of our time together. This was generally a good thing.
The outside and innards of “its a small world” were altered to reflect the season. It was an adorable change.
Jason and I hung out in California Adventure one evening by ourselves. We had a fabulous time eating hand-dipped ice cream bars and watching packs of people hustle by.
Food: On Disneyland vacations past, getting good food hasn’t been a top priority for us. That’s why I’m pleased to report that this time we got some excellent grub. We ate a yummy lunch at the Blue Bayou, that cool restaurant inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. It was a hard place to get a seat at. We made reservations weeks in advance and yet only a few timeslots were available. The food was tasty but not as gourmet as I was expecting. However, whatever the meal lacked the atmosphere made up for. With glowing lanterns hanging from fake trees illuminating an artificial sky, it was as serene as a mosquito-free fabricated swamp gets.
I like a wild ride.
Jason caught Eden giggling at the Disney cartoons playing in the hotel lobby.
Napa Rose, the fancy restaurant located at the Grand Californian, was another place we tried that’s worth mentioning. We decided to sample this popular spot even though we couldn’t get a reservation, which meant we had to sit in the lounge to eat our dinner. It wasn’t as secluded as a reserved table would have been but the delightful cuisine was worth putting up with some nearby neighbors for.
In my opinion, both of these restaurants are worth checking out if you happen to be in the area.
Duffy, Disney’s teddy bear, was as cuddly as his stuffing would suggest.
Few things are as glorious as basking by a pool when temperatures in the 20s await you at home.
It’s hard to find complaints about a vacation you didn’t have to pay for so you will get none from me. The weather was lovely, the company was more than plentiful, the crowds were mostly manageable, the decorations were festive, and the food was better than anticipated. Since our expense to amusement ratio was very favorable, I’d say we got a good bang for no bucks.
When some people need to relax they’ll veg in front of the TV. For others taking it easy might mean going for a drive or hitting the driving range. But for me and Jason nothing says unwinding like biking 15 miles through desert sandpits, gnarly bedrock, and bouncy baby-heads. Yes, for us becoming exhausted in Moab is as relaxing as it gets.
Scampering on your haunches was sometimes necessary while ascending to Castleton Tower.
Isn’t he cute?
Jason and I just made our biannual visit to Moab. We waited to take our fall trip this time until the madness of our party had waned. The weather in Moab in November can be a little touchy but on this occasion it was utter perfection. And by utter perfection I mean t-shirts and shorts and huge smiles.
The way to Castleton Tower wound over quite a few stony ledges.
We started our excursion off with a hike to the base of Castleton Tower, a 400-foot monolith also known as Castle Rock, in Castle Valley. Castleton Tower stands on a cone of boulders and gravel over 1000 feet high, the kind of terrain that appears impassable when you’re looking at it from the bottom. This difficult trail was obstructed often by chunks of stone and hard to follow at times. Ascending it required some creative clambering skills. But, honestly, that’s what made it fun. There’s nothing wrong with strenuous when it’s part of an adventure. We were so enthusiastic about this hike that not only did we make it up to and around the Tower but we also chose to detour on a sketchy path to check out The Rectory, another outcropping of rock that rises above the opposite side of the ridge. We were pretty tired by the time we got back to our car but we were also pretty satisfied with what we had experienced in way of scenery and exploration.
The crest on which Castleton Tower stands provides a narrow division between two craggy lowlands.
The cracked barren valleys below The Rectory and lofty towers adjacent to it fashioned a strange rocky feast.
Our second day in Moab was spent biking the Kokopelli Trail to a place called Yellow Jacket Canyon. We had never ridden this path before so I was as intrigued by the prospects of its new terrain as Jason was by its name. I guess our intrigue got the better of us. We hit this 14.4-mile loop expecting it to be relatively easy in comparison to other Moab trails we have ridden but, although the route was wide enough for off-road vehicles, it was rather rough in places. Sand was the villain of the first third of this expedition. If you’ve never tried going up miles of steep hills on a bike while deep sand attempts to consume your tires you’ve never known frustraustion. Yeah, that’s what happens when frustration and exhaustion get together and produce deformed spawn. We were literally making our way at about 1-2 miles an hour for a while there. At that glorious speed we would have made it back to our car at about never. Luckily, downhill stone eventually replaced uphill sand and we cruised over the deformed bedrock quickly. Quickly, in this case, means we hit speeds up to about 13 MPH but mostly stayed around 6 MPH, which I realize doesn’t exactly fit the standard definition of that word. But hey, after creeping along practically slower than a grandpa with a walker that seemed pretty fast. Lots of bumpy stone and a series of baby-head infested hills later we emerged back onto the highway and from there we were soon back to our car. By the way, for those of you unfamiliar with biking lingo baby-heads are rocks the size of a baby’s head that can make wrecking practically effortless.
The Castleton Tower is one of the most popular rock climbing spots in the world. We gawked at several scaling extremists as we navigated through the boulders below.
Yellow Jacket’s bedrock made for some fun riding.
The view from the top of Yellow Jacket Canyon wasn’t super impressive but it was nice.
Our final call on the Yellow Jacket Canyon section of the Kokopelli Trail? This trail was definitely not as pretty as others we’ve done in the area but the solitude was nice. We only saw one couple on a 4wheeler the whole day. The path was more of a technical treat than we were expecting but the sand sucked unimaginably hard. We’re glad we tried it out but I don’t think it’s going to be top on our list of redos.
The Flat Iron Mesa road went through some scenic spots like this sandstone-encircled grassland.
The scene from the top of Flat Iron Mesa was pretty kicking. Hatch Wash Canyon and Kane Springs Canyon merged below us in a panorama of colorful precipices.
On our final day in Moab we biked Flat Iron Mesa. This trail has a reputation for being an easy family-friendly kind of ride. But that reputation, in our opinion, is not deserved. I don’t know of any children that would willingly conquer Flat Iron’s endless hills. The level of complaining you’d get from the kiddos would make getting them to take the garbage out seem like a delight. No, Flat Iron Mesa wasn’t the easygoing ride we were expecting but I guess since we didn’t ride it for its easygoingness we can’t really grumble about its lack thereof. We were interested in this route because of the enthralling possibilities for sidetracking. Many enticing wilder trails shoot off from Flat Iron making it a great starting place for countless adventures. We took one of these options to an overlook above Kane Springs Canyon. The view from this lofty perch was mesmerizing but the 3.5 mile spur we had to ride to get to it made the rest of the desert look like downtown Manhattan. I don’t think anyone else had ridden this trail in months, maybe years. It was so overgrown in places that deciphering where to stick our bikes was like solving a Sherlock Holmes mystery. When all was said and done, Flat Iron Mesa, with our additional excursion to the end of the known universe, was a 17.5 mile journey that took over 4 hours and finished off any energy reserves we might have had. Fun? Yes. Family-friendly? No.
Jason is literally standing in the middle of the trail we took to the Kane Springs Canyon overlook in this picture. Having trouble seeing it? So did we.
From far above Kane Springs Canyon the vistas were beautiful. At least there was that pot of gold at the end of our eroded rainbow.
Our trip to Moab was predictably fantastic. We’ve never returned from our favorite vacation spot dissatisfied. We biked 32 miles of tricky terrain and hiked to the top of rocky ridges. Now that’s restful! Before you shake your head too much at our choice of relaxation though I should add that there’s not much to do in Moab once the sun goes down and these days the sun goes down pretty early. After dark Jason and I mostly just read books, watched TV, and typed posts. We’d never make time for hours of that at home. So, see, our idea of taking it easy isn’t too far off from yours. We just prefer to ride across the desert before we settle in to read a good book.
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