Christmas in New York

For the first time in our 3 years of marriage/4 Christmases married, we were unable to travel home to celebrate the holidays. 🙁 We knew pretty much from the start of the year that it would be unlikely with Curtis’ schedule and had accepted it, but it was still sad to see pictures and hear from family and know what we were missing out on. Such as the food…oh how I miss all the Christmas treats and the feast with my grandparents! I did my best to recreate all our favorite desserts to make it feel like Christmas around here. On the bright side, Curtis had been scheduled to work Christmas day (and a week surrounding it), but they gave everyone the day off so we were able to spend it together. We skyped with our families, ate our favorite foods, did a puzzle, and watched Die Hard (Same as last year — I guess that makes it our family tradition now? 😉 ).

We also went on our first official “Winter Hike” — I’ve mentioned our hiking challenges here many times, but some of these challenges have a bonus for if you hike all the peaks in the winter season (December 21 – March 20). By no means are we going to try to complete this challenge this year, we don’t have the time or the desire to do so, but we thought it’d be fun to redo some of our favorites. We decided to start with the first hike we did the day we arrived in our new hometown in NY, Spruce Mountain. It had snowed a few days prior, but others had hiked the trail and left a well-packed down path to the peak. We chose a day where the temperature was warmer (upper 30’s) and were warm enough the whole time.

It’s so fun to return to the first places we visited now that we’ve lived here for several months and are more familiar with the area. It brings back the feelings of excitement and newness that we felt the first week. It helped me put in perspective where this mountain is in relation to the others we’ve hiked since then, and now I could hike the trail as a more experienced Adirondack hiker. The trail was steeper than I remembered, but still easier than other fire tower hikes we’ve done. Then of course, it was fun to see this area in a whole different season, with beautiful untouched snow surrounding the trail.

I used this hike as an opportunity to practice snowshoeing. I know it’s better on fresh snow, but I felt much more confident having the spikes on the bottom for extra traction while walking downhill. Curtis and I both found good snowshoes in good condition on Craigslist for much less than we would’ve paid for brand new, which I think is a great investment if it gets us out on the trails together more often! Even if we don’t always live in areas that get snow, I think we’ll find many opportunities to use them for years to come — we snowshoed in Bryce Canyon a few years ago and loved it!

Since we were experimenting with winter hiking and snowshoeing, we also decided to bring along our puppy Charlotte to see how she’d do. We had been concerned that the snow would come up too high and she would be too cold, but as always, she blew us away with how she adapted and LOVED this snowy hike. This shouldn’t even surprise me any more, but it makes us so happy to see her loving every adventure we take her on no matter what. Because the trail was already well packed, she had no trouble with walking or having the snow come up too high. She did venture off trail a few times, and while she may have acknowledged that it was a mistake, it hardly stopped her from following scents and jumping through the beautiful snow. My favorite part of the hike was when Curtis and I stopped to catch our breath for the last stretch of trail, and I looked ahead and saw Charlotte literally bounding up to the top of the mountain.

The one big mistake we did make, however, was letting Charlotte walk up to the top of the fire tower with us. She really wanted to when we reached the base, and since we were the only people up there, we said “Why not?” But as she climbed the steps higher and the tower became more narrow, she started to regret the decision and refused to go any higher. With enough coaxing and pushing we got her to make it to the top, but getting her to go down was much more challenging. Even worse, the steps were covered in snow and ice, already making me nervous about walking down myself. I don’t remember if Curtis ended up carrying her all the way or if she finally pushed through and did it herself, but once she was back on the ground, she wouldn’t go anywhere near the tower or let Curtis hold her for a family picture. Now we know, never let Charlotte climb the fire towers, even if she really thinks she wants to! 🙂

After missing out on spending the holidays with family, I’d say the hardest thing was going back to reality with Curtis back at work on the day after Christmas. Growing up, my dad always had that whole week off, and I thought the 1-to-2 week break between the holidays was just a given. However, thanks to some wintery weather, he had one early out, and a snow day all thanks to Winter Storm Fortis. That brings us to a total of 5 early outs and 2 snow days so far — and he doesn’t have to make up those days. Maybe winter isn’t so bad after all! 😉