Saturday, January 16

A Mini Winter Vacation: Mission Ridge Snowboarding

Our alarms went off at 8:30 and again at 8:45.  The bed was so comfortable that we had a hard time getting out of bed for our assigned breakfast time.  We put some pants on, a sweatshirt, shoes and I washed my face quickly and put up my hair.  We walked upstairs to the 4th floor and got in line.  We must have heard the lady's directions at least a dozen times.  We could almost recite to other hotel guests as we stood there.  This was the most epic hotel breakfast I've ever had but the Covid restrictions made the process slow.  We had to be patient.  I understood because they had to do it this way to continue to be able to serve breakfast to their guests.  

Ben and I got omelets, fruit, French toast, pastries, drinks and sausage and decided to take it to our room so we could eat and get all of our stuff packed up...plus all the tables upstairs were mostly taken and didn't want to waste our time looking for one.  The food was pretty good and I think we both ended up eating all of our food.

When we were done, Ben packed up while I walked back into town to buy one more die so we had a set of six.  It didn't open until 10 so I had to waste 15 minutes.  I walked to the end of the street and came back around.  I went inside the shirt store and talked to Mom on the phone while I got a shirt for her.  I hung up and then went to the store with the dice, got one more penguin one and ended up getting a set of six with cats on it.  I felt weird just buying one die.  Now we have two sets of dice, penguins and cats.  I will make sure we bring one set when we travel so we will have games to play while we have some down time.  

I walked back to the hotel and helped Ben finish packing up and loading the Edge. We checked out and started to head out of town.  We stopped at the Safeway for some more drinks, snacks and a sandwich to eat while we were on the mountain.  We paid and I needed to get the geocache in the parking lot.  Ben said he had found this a long time ago while he was here last.  Washington Native Plants A-Z:  T is for Thimbleberry (GC786CY) was hidden near the gas station portion of the parking lot.  I had to be really careful and really sneaky because it was icy and there were a lot of muggles going in and out of this location.  

We walked back to the Edge and followed highway 2 east into Wenatchee.  Our goal was to make it up to Mission Ridge before noon.

We followed the signs and the address that we plugged into Ben's car GPS.  We followed the road and watched the snow on the side of the road get deeper and deeper as we got higher in elevation.  It just didn't seem like there would be a ski resort up here.  We hit the last corner and saw the parking lot and Ben parked as close as we could to the ticket office.  We parked, changed some of our clothes, put on our boots and grabbed all the stuff we would need so we didn't have to come back to the Edge until we were done.  We walked to the ticket office, got our lift tickets and then walked up to the rental office to stand in line. 

Ben already had boots so he just needed the board and bindings.  I needed a board, bindings, boots and a helmet.  It took a while but not as much time as we spent last time at Snoqualmie getting our gear.

We got fitted, got organized and Ben took my boots back to the Edge while I strapped myself to my board and practiced standing up.  

Us waiting almost five years to do this definitely took away some of my skills I learned last time.  I basically had to start all over again.  We strapped the GoPro to my helmet and stood in line for the ski lift.  

We had to wear face coverings every where we went except for when we were by ourselves somewhere.  It wasn't too weird because most of the time you covered up your face anyway because of the cold weather.  The ski lift seemed to take longer than the one we did at Snoqualmie.  

I was pretty nervous because I remembered last time having a hard time getting off.  This time wasn't any different.  I fell every time I got off the ski lift.  I had a heck of a time getting on the board and staying upright the first time down.  I got frustrated because I knew I was better than this and I hated trying to get back up since it took a lot of energy getting back up on the board.  I managed to stay on my board halfway down the hill after falling a couple dozen times. 

We reached the bottom of the hill and needed to use the restroom.  I felt so much better after that and the next couple runs down the hill I did better.  

The last run I only fell once and that was because I was trying to white wash Ben.  We ended up and down the hill five times because that is all we hand energy for and we could only be there until about 4 p.m.  We paid for a full day but didn't get there in time.  I told Ben not to worry about it because we still had fun anyway.  We returned our rentals, Ben got my boots from the Edge and we bought some stickers from the small store.  We took a few pictures and then walked to the Edge so we could leave.

We took off our snow jackets, gloves and top layers and both put on a dry sweatshirt.  We kept our snow pants on, piled into the Edge and started heading down the hill into Wenatchee.  We ate our sandwich as we made our way down.  We decided to go to Walmart before we checked into our hotel so we could pick up a few things and try to find some shorts because we didn't bring swimming suits with us for pools and hot tubs.  We went inside and checked and they didn't have anything that resembled shorts...not even for working out.  We thought this was weird.  We left and saw there was a geocache at the end of the parking lot.  Wenatchee's Fake Mountain Range (GC7K0KP) was a pretty cool spot but we could not find anything that resembled a geocache.  So we moved on.

We drove to the Target to see if they had shorts we could get and we got lucky.  There were some pairs of shorts on sale for $10 and they were pretty decent shorts too.  We purchased them and then went back out to the Edge and saw there was a geocache near the parking lot.  R.I.P Al, Bert and Sons (GC5WRA3) which was a film cannister hidden underneath a lamp skirt.  Those are lame but there really isn't anywhere else you could hide something like that.  I have a lamp skirt cache in Olympia one of my favorite restaurants that I check on at least once a month. 

Ben plugged the address of the hotel into his car GPS and we headed towards East Wenatchee to The Cedar Inn.  Ben checked us in and then we grabbed our luggage and got all situated.  We were going to go soak in the hot tub (why we bought the shorts) but they didn't update their website about no pools or hot tub because of Covid.  It was the reason why we booked this hotel in the first place...we knew we would be sore from snowboarding and a nice soak we were looking so forward to it.  We were disappointed of course...like we have been over the past 10 months already.

I suggested that we get some dinner before we settled in any further and we decided on some teriyaki and we knew we would have to pick it up and bring it back to our room.  We found a place, Original J's Teriyaki, which was about a mile or so from the hotel.  It had pretty good reviews so we went for it.  Ben called it in and we went and picked it up.  We brought it back and finished watching the Bills and Ravens game.  

After we ate, we played some 10,000 and watched some of the movies that were playing on the television.  

We got cleaned up and the hot shower felt nice on my sore body.  I did some Facebooking and uploaded the pictures thus far of our trip.  We finally went to bed around midnight or so.  I took some stuff so I would be less sore the next day.  I fell asleep instantly. 

Next Adventure:  A Mini Winter Vacation:  Exploring Wenatchee, Waterville and Chelan (US 97 Loop)

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