'Twas The Week Before Christmas...Pt. 1: Finding Winter in AZ

School was out! Our Christmas packages were all shipped! Our presents were all wrapped! Now there was nothing left to do but wait...and keep the kids from going crazy. Due to his new job, which only started in July, Nate had to work for most of the Christmas holiday...so we Barrett girls were left mostly to our own devices.

We decided to open Grandma's presents early, in anticipation of our winter trek!

First up: find some snow! Lorelai and Celeste have both been lamenting this whole winter, "I wish we could see snow. I'm sad that it doesn't snow here at Christmas!" Not so fast, kids; although snow in southern AZ is admittedly hard to come by, it's not impossible to find. In fact, Mount Lemmon is only about 90 minutes from our house--it's a 9,157-foot peak just north of Tucson that boasts the southernmost ski resort in the continental United States. And, as luck would have it, there had been lots of rain the weekend before--and "rain" usually translates to "snow" on Mount Lemmon.

I had to check the road conditions online; sometimes the snow overwhelms the not-weatherproofed highway, and the road up Mount Lemmon is closed. Luckily, the road reopened early that Monday morning, so off we went!

 

At the foot of the mountain, a few police officers were warning people away unless they had snow chains on their cars. Bah! Snow chains are for sissies! I thought, and up we went anyway. My girls' miniscule bladders started acting up just a few minutes into the drive, so we had to get out at a campground on the lower mountain to take a "break." As you can see, we were driving through pea-soup fog at that point. But still...no snow.

However, that changed once we hit about 5,000 feet! At first we saw little white piles spotting the side of the road. As we progressed up the mountain, we started seeing snow clinging to the tree branches...then the rocks...then all over the place! Unfortunately, we didn't make it all the way up the mountain...the roads weren't plowed past 8,500 feet or so, and I wasn't going to risk my kids' lives trying to make it all the way to Summerhaven in a thick fog on a narrow, shoulderless road. However, when we stopped, the view was pretty breathtaking:

For someone like me, who grew up in Colorado and is used to snow in the wintertime, this was a gorgeous trip back through time. For Arizona babies like my girls, it was an incredible novelty. It was also (to their surprise), very cold in the snow. Lorelai kept shouting, "Why do my hands feel funny? They don't want to work anymore! What's happening to me?!?!?" Yeah, well, welcome to winter, kid.

Then there was Celeste, who (after overcoming her initial trepidation) was fascinated by the snow, and couldn't stop slurping it off her gloves. Ew.

And then there was poor Aurora, who went from being bemused by the snow, to wary of it, to terrified of it, all within about 10 minutes. I guess she is a true "child of the desert"--maybe she was too young to really appreciate a winter wonderland!

Anyway, by and large, a good time was had by all. We watched some older kids sledding (note to self: find a sled for next time!!), tromped through the trees, and even made a few wimpy snowballs. We didn't stay long (perhaps half an hour or so); after that the kids were all too cold and hungry, and I had to be home in the afternoon for piano lessons. At least that's my excuse; I was a little cold & tired too! Yes, I have become a wimp; I miss the snow very much but I'm just not acclimatized to it anymore. Darn Arizona.

Well, hopefully we'll do this again next Christmas...it was a really cool (pun intended) experience. Next I'll talk about some of the things we did to celebrate Christmas back in town.