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I wasn’t even sure that there was a 4:00am. But there was, and it’s bad.

We set our alarms for 4:00am, and we got up when they rang. We made the painful, uphill, snow-covered trek to the car, carrying nearly everything we had brought with us and started driving at 4:45.

It was black outside, and we were too tired (both from lack of sleep, and from the hike up the to the car) to pay attention to the stars overhead. They were beautiful, no doubt, but there was no sign of the moon to give us any light.

About 6:15 we began to see signs of the sun. Well, I did. Abbie had hear head on a pillow, and had her eyes shut. But she says she wasn’t sleeping.

Little excitement from there on out. We sat down for lunch at Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen in… I don’t even remember what town. It was okay.

Then we drove some more, and we got home, and it was great to see the family.

Then Abbie left with her mother and brother to see Newsies at a nearby stage. And that was the end of the trip.

Breakfast: Bacon and Eggs. Again.

And I finally remembered to make some coffee.

The Elk weren’t bugling, so I figured I should. I hadn’t pulled out my trumpet since we got here, so I wanted to get a little practice in.

A hush fell over the household, then the sound of great mourning went up from the people. But the dancing man, he don’t care.

We had a very relaxing morning, and we devised to go skating at 2:00pm. That left plenty of time for Abbie to do some sledding and even build a snow fort. GAH! I had wanted to build a snow fort, and I forgot about it! Well, Abbie built one anyhow.

We headed into town. How do we travel? Like this:

More turkeys on the way down the mountain. They are hard to see, but there are about 6 of them in there.

Then we got to the skating rink. Given my technological constrictions at the moment, you’ll have to wait for more footage from the rink, but Abbie went from zero to sixty in the short time we were there.

She just kept pushing herself the whole time, and really developed some skills she didn’t have when she arrived.

The really funny thing about the skating – I was a celebrity on the ice. Really. People kept coming up to me and asking me to teach them how to do what I was doing. “How do you spin around like that?” “How do you skate backwards?” And on, and on. I was tired. I sat down. Someone would come up to me and ask me how to do something, or how I made it look so easy.

Me. A fat old man. Who lives in Texas, and has only been on the ice once or twice in the last 25 years. I’m the belle of the ball. Well, it’s nice to be loved.

The temperatures were closing back down toward freezing as we headed back up the mountain. It was a little slippery, but manageable.

We got home and started preparing for departure. As much work as we could do, then we watched The Breakfast Club. Every time I watch it, I am surprised by how crude it is. I find myself embarrassed sitting next to my daughter during some scenes. But it really is a brilliant movie.

And there was evening, and here was morning – a third day.

Breakfast – leftover pizza, and random foraging.

By the way – I somehow managed to forget to make coffee. Yesterday, too. No coffee two days running.

Then we sang Auld Lang Syne.

We also played a game of fast chess. Each player was allowed 15 seconds to make their move.

Fast chess is a much better game than regular chess. I won, by the way.

Then I managed to get a pretty decent video of Abbie, now well comfortable with those slippery sticks attached to her feet.

What happened next? Well, we’d skied the same trail three times now, and thought it would be good to try a new trail.

We were wrong.

Our very first run, we intended to take a green (beginner) trail called Road Runner. Just as we were about to head down, we were told that it was a very difficult trail, despite the designation. So we followed a different set of trails.

Well, now having run the mountain thrice, we thought we could conquer any green trail. And we probably could. However – even though it seemed like it should have been an easy trail to navigate, we somehow found ourselves trapped in black diamond (expert) trails, and no other way down.

It was a brutal descent, but we managed to get down without injury. Depending on how you define injury. My legs were spent on the effort. We went back to our original trail for the next run, but my legs were cramping ferociously. Abbie, however, did great. She even took one run without me.

Abbie’s final run got her back to the lodge just at closing time for the mountain. Skiing is a blast.

Dinner was rice, ham, broccoli, and squash mixed together. Great post-ski meal.

We played a couple games of Mancala, including reverse-Mancala, where you try to end up with as few stones as possible.

And there was morning, and there was evening – a second day.

Day 1, or two, depending upon your point of view, but I’ll call it day 1.

The temperature outside was cold. Just about 10 degrees F. The temperature in the house was just under 64. This was slightly concerning, since the thermostats were set to 70. Spent several hours in the morning working with Bob and Fred over the phone. Still not sure if the system was working correctly when we started. But we got it working. Looks like the system simply cannot keep the house up to 70 degrees inside when the outside is 10 degrees.

So we had bacon and eggs for breakfast, a leisurely morning, and then went to visit Cloudcroft.

First stop, Cloudcroft Brewing Company. I only had one beer – it was good but not great. I can’t speak for any of the other beers there, so go try them yourself.

The pizza was very good. Most impressively, Abbie had a gluten and dairy free pizza, and it was really good.

We walked through Cloudcroft, window-shopping and whatnot. Then we went back to the house.

Where we played chess.

And I lost. Chess is stupid.

Then I hiked back to the car, because we had left a blue-ray player there. Why does that matter? Because the blue-ray player allowed us to connect to Netflix, so we could watch Infinity War. Which we did.

Then we read some more. And there was evening, and there was morning – the first day.

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.