New Years Day. Not a popular day for getting up early. But with 9 hours and 23 minutes of driving time ahead of you, you want to get an early start. I gave up the normal festivities and was asleep before midnight, so we could attempt a 5:00am wake up, 5:30 departure.
Abbie, however, went out for the late night adventures and didn’t get home until about 1:00am as the new year was dawning, but the New Years parties were still raging.
We drove in the dark from central Texas. As the sun rose, it remained hidden behind thickly overcast skies.
We saw a mama elk and her fawn. The were so close to us, and so unconcerned by our presence, that I couldn’t figure out what kind of animal they were. I thought there were some domestic animal. But we continued up the mountain. Sorry, didn’t get a picture.
There were something like 10 turkeys in all. The two on the left just kept running in front of us, while the smart ones headed off the road.
We arrived with what the locals claim is 24″ of snow. I said more like 14″, until I had to trudge through it several times. Then I wanted credit for trudging through 24″ of snow, because it was really hard. This is the flat part, but half of it is downhill. Oh, downhill, that’s nice, is it? No! Unlike our grandparents day, we only have to go uphill one way. But it’s still uphill one way.
We didn’t do a lot more after that. We made a trip back to the car to get our food and whatnot. We just hung out. We discovered that the TV wasn’t working – it kept showing football. But we figured out how to make it play Mythbusters, so that was cool.
And we read for a bit.
Cloudcrofting day 1: Complete.
Sounds like pure heaven! Cold heaven, but heaven nonetheless! Well there probably aren’t stupid turkeys in heaven. So there’s that. Love all the pictures!
Pretty sure that the temperatures in heaven often dip into the teens, and rarely (though occasionaly, and only slightly) exceed the 70s.