A Lloyd Life: Saturday Snowmobiling

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Saturday Snowmobiling

Saturday morning Richelle and I dragged our butts out of bed earlier than usual and went snowmobiling with her parents up near Woodland, UT. I wasn't too excited about getting up so early on a weekend, but I was still eager to go. We were told to show up at her parents between 8:30 and 9:00am, but Richelle knew better, and we didn't show up until about 10am, and we still didn't leave until about 10:30am.

The drive to Woodland is about an hour . . . if you don't know where Woodland is, don't feel too bad, because I didn't either. Basically you head up to Park City, then head south like you're going to Heber City for a little bit before you head east to Kamas. From Kamas, you head southeast for a bit and BAM!, you're in Woodland. Actually, just east of Woodland is the Uintas National Forest, and it was there that we spent the day snowmobiling.

It was a pretty nice morning - the warmest we'd had in awhile, so I guess I shouldn't have been that surprised that we weren't the only ones up there. In fact, we were approached by a ranger just about the moment we parked, who was checking the registrations on all the snowmobiles. Several of the sleds had been registered that morning on-line and we didn't have '08 stickers yet . . . unfortunately, the ranger didn't seem to know much about the on-line process, and it took a little bit of time to run him through the paperwork. Needless to say, it took us awhile, even after we got there, to unload everything, gear up, and make it on the trail.

Richelle all ninja'd up

Me looking like I just stepped out of a Tom Clancy novel

We eventually made it on the trail, and the fun began. There's nothing quite like blowing up a trail at 60 mph, snow pellets from the sled in front of you bouncing off your helmet . . . yeah, it was awesome! We eventually made it to this huge mountain-side where we spent some time playing around.

Around 3pm a storm started to blow in (one we'd been expecting to hit all day), and we headed back to the trailers. By the time we got back it was snowing pretty heavily. We were all exhausted, since by then it was about 4:30pm . . . Richelle and I had only expected to be gone a half-day. It took awhile, but we eventually finished loading up. By then it was snowing pretty heavily, and the drive home was pretty much white-out conditions. We didn't make it back until about 7:30pm . . . it was a long day, and by then we were exhausted. Today Richelle and I woke up to some seriously sore muscles . . . yeah, I'm getting old.