Snow. . . Spears?

When the boy and I left for work this morning we were amazed to see that the falling snow wasn't flakes. We both assumed that when it's snowing, it's snowing snowflakes. This snow looked like tiny spears of snow, similar in shape to the frost we saw on the trees during the days of heavy fog a few weeks ago. Upon further Google assisted research I learned that the snow we were seeing was probably needle snow crystals. Neat!


Photo from Caltech's Snow crystals site

Finally Got my Skates on the Ice

Finally got my skates out on the ice on Monday.



It was snowing and the roads were crappy so I didn't want to take Optimus to Kung Fu when his ride canceled. The rink is plowed on the west side of Lake Nokomis, by the beach with all the playground equipment. The rink inside the boards near the big flood lights was being used for Community Hockey League, but the other 12 that had been plowed and flooded for the pond hockey championship, that didn't happen with much fanfare this year because of the rain, were all ours.




I tentatively attempted to find my inner figure skater, no doubt looking insanely ridiculous, but the boys encouraged me and in no time we were parting the few inches of accumulated snow, leaving curvy lines, loops and the remnants of wipe outs behind.




We ventured to Pepitos for dinner post skate, not feeling up to cooking something worth eating, Optimus was quite pleased with his menu, especially when I told him Jack climbed a ruin in Mexico that may have resembled the one in the picture.




To top off the pleasant evening of skating, tasty Tex-Mex, and a happy family. . . we saw a sturdy looking russet colored fox dash across the parkway near its intersection with Cedar Ave on our way back to the house. In pursuit of a rabbit? Perhaps.








I love our new neighborhood.

Lake Turned Perfect XC Moonscape

We've been cross country skiing on the lake at night. The past few nights have been spectacular for this endeavor with the full moon lighting our way. . . or the light pollution reflecting off the cloud cover, as the case may be. Matt's borrowed a XC ski set-up from a work friend, and I took my skis out of their long multi-winter storage (see Mom, I told you I'd use them for a long time! : ) so we could take advantage of the mostly clear lake surface for some athletic exploration.




My resourceful friend Laura actually prompted our adventuring with a link she sent me to a list of snowshoeing opportunities around the city that included Nokomis across the street. The list included a few nighttime wildlife walks by snowshoe and I figured if the parks people can romp around the lake on snowshoes in the dark, there wasn't any reason we couldn't ski. Especially when past nightfall seemed to be the only time we didn't have other stuff going on.

I struggle to find appropriate words for the exhilaration and refreshment I received as we traveled further and further from shore. . . Winter in the city is always muted, but the silence of the frozen lake was nature in its most dampened state. The moonscape exuded a zen-like calm that forced me to periodically just stop and breathe deeply as I admired the moonlight reflecting off the gentle wind ripples composed of snow and ice. Gentle is probably the wrong word for the fierce winds that formed them, but in the still air of the night, they happily embraced the description. Abandoned fishing holes proved easy to spot, since they were the only protruding mounds as far as the eye could see. On our way back to shore we saw two other adventurous souls pulling a sled out from shore towards the Cedar Ave bridge for some moonlight ice fishing, so we knew we weren't the only ones, which was nice.

Saturday we talked Saul and Noel into joining us for an XC ski outing on the lake after dinner, and it proved to be equally as awe inspiring, albeit a tad bit chillier with a breeze at our backs as we headed back to the house where a toasty fire and nightcaps were waiting.