
Friday mornings I go to Anchorage to work in the temple for my Church. I then stop at Costco, this week I stopped at Blaine’s Art Supply, and then I headed home. My daughter and her husband were helping me with dinner, our Valentines Day dinner. Pizza in several varieties.
I got home earlier than the pizza’s needed to be cooked, but they were already here and were watching and laughing at a video. They asked if I wanted to have a little bit of fun! They showed me their video and I, of course, was game to try it out.
What they had been doing was pulling each other with their truck. They had attached a rope to the hitch on the back, and were sitting in a little cheap circle sled sledding behind the truck. We have a fairly long driveway, so it’s not just a quick down the hill ride, it’s about a 1/2 mile long and took about 3 minutes each way. Best part, we didn’t have to walk back up the hill when our ride was over!
The driveway has a couple of longish straight stretches, but is mostly twisty and windy. The snow is soft and powdery, even the driveway isn’t that hard when you wipe out. We have had enough snow now that there are some pretty tall banks on both sides of the driveway, so you can’t get shot out into the trees and get hurt.
The hardest part was holding on to the rope. The rope had snow in it, so it was kind of slick already. Then, as we made several passes, my gloves got caked with snow that wouldn’t come off very well either, so everything was a bit slick. But, that just added to the fun of it all.

My son-in-law then thought it might be fun to try a kayak, so he went and grabbed one of those and he attached the rope to the kayak, no more holding on. The driveway has a layer of ice, and then a layer of semi-packed snow about 1/2 inch thick on top of that. Because of that, we weren’t worried about any wear on the bottom of the kayak. It’s also much thicker plastic than the cheap sleds.
The sleds ping ponged back and forth on the banks of the drive, but the kayak has a center bump the length of the kayak and it tracked in the snow so well that it towed almost like a trailer. You could just sit back and relax and enjoy the beautiful day with the snow blowing in your face!
We all decided the sled was more fun because there was more involved in staying on, but the kayak was a lot of fun as well. I love that I live where we have some land to play on like that without risk of running into any other cars or people. And, we were making wenough noise that any moose would stay well away from what we were doing.
Winter isn’t my favorite time of year, and this time of year I’m ready for it to be done. But, getting out and enjoying a fun winter activity makes winter much more enjoyable. I’m glad they invited me to play in the snow with them. I am hoping these 2 videos will load correctly. They’re not the greatest quality, but it’ll give you an idea anyway.
Featured Artwork
Pine Grosbeak
The Pine Grosbeak is my current featured artwork. This beautiful bird is a colorful addition to the bleak Alaska winters, visiting bird feeders throughout the season.
The Pine Grosbeak is currently on sale and available as prints, an 8 pack set of note cards and envelopes, as well as a water bottle. You can check it out here.

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