For the last few days, Thom and his family have been visiting. As always, it’s been a grand time. We were mostly outside (of course!) but had fun with some indoor sports. Julian was excited to shoot some pool:
After a few games, he went to YouTube to watch some videos about how to calculate angles and make bank shots… including a terribly confusing one featuring Donald Duck talking about geometry. Thom definitely looks the most professional:
Sefton, of course, was perfectly happy messing up the balls mid-game.
He also enjoyed foosball, making incredible shots from the middle five-man. (“Again!” he’d shout with glee after putting another one in the goal.)
The poor kid wasn’t quite sure what to call me… for the past few years I’ve been Uncle Uncle Uncle Jeff (yes, I’m an uncle cubed) and he slipped into that a few times, but managed to remember to call me Uncle Cosmo most of the time. Auntie La became Auntie Pepper.
Naturally we took to the slopes. We headed up to Blacktail Resort, which is due west from us, directly across Flathead Lake. Thursdays are only $25 for a lift ticket… a welcome change from the $200+ lift tickets in several Colorado resorts. I was amazed at the complete lack of lift lines, and the nearly empty runs. Combined with the one-hour drive with no traffic (versus three hours on the horror that is I-70 in Colorado), I’m sold on Montana skiing.
From one of the runs near the top of Blacktail, there’s a great view of the lake. It’s easy to pick out Bigfork and Woods Bay, and from there I can extrapolate where we live. Of course I had to make the joke “I can see my house from here!” (With a telescope, I very well could have.)
The next day we went to Whitefish Resort, which is north of Kalispell and definitely more like Colorado resorts, including lift lines:
At one point during the day, Thom rode the lift with a guy from Breckenridge who said he actually comes to Montana to ski– despite living in Breckenridge— because he’s tired of the expensive tickets and hour-long lift lines there. Indeed, I don’t think we waited in line longer than a few minutes even at the busiest lifts.
From the top of the mountain, I could again see my house!
The view to the northwest was spectacular: you can see the peaks of Glacier National Park. Plus, Katie.
The trees near the summit looked so cool!
The sky was a gorgeous deep azure, and the temperature was right at freezing at the summit. It was a beautiful day to be on the slopes.
My companions agreed.
On Day Three, we went cross-country skiing up in Glacier. Pepper and I had never been cross-country skiing before, but we soon got the hang of it. There’s definitely a technique of striding and gliding.
Julian, of course, is an outstanding skiier and zoomed past all of us.
I stumbled at times as I figured out how to use the right form. And I felt a lot better about my poor technique when Katie (an accomplished cross-country skiier) completely collapsed in a pile of poles and skis.
After three straight days of skiing in gorgeous weather, we felt pretty satisfied. We had some homemade pizza, played some Tetris, and sat around chatting. Good times all around.