Mar 5, 2017

Becca and I headed out early to Jack Frost. I got my books on surprisingly easy and went out to get my lift ticket only to be approached by not one but two people trying to sell me tickets right at the window. Both were ushered away by security people, but I followed one of them into the lodge and got a ticket from her saving $18. Whatever works. The mountain is incredibly small. I was surprised that I was already at the bottom when I did a blue run to start off. Becca and I did a couple of the baby greens and they were like nothing I'd ever seen. I could see the bottom of the lift from the "top" of the hill. We had to stop doing that quickly.

We got on longer greens and blues pretty quickly and Becca did really well. We did more blues and it wasn't long before I convinced her to go on a diamond. She fell once, but not because of skiing badly, so she was more confident about her ability. I was really surprised at how quickly she picked it up and improved. We met up with the others and Laura after a while to ski with them for a bit. We went inside for some food and then spent the rest of the day on blues and diamonds. It was more fun than I expected, but we were ready to go by mid-afternoon.

On our way home we decided it was too nice to not stop for disc golf at Little Lehigh Parkway. It was a nice way to end the day outside and there wasn't really anyone else there. I also found two discs on the course.

We hit Wegman's for a nice dinner from the hot bar and then went to Vegan Treats, of course. The ice cream was hazelnut and chocolate. So amazing. We also got a couple of the cookies for later.

One last stop before heading home was Sterling Pig Brewery. We had them at the Abbaye's event a couple months ago so we wanted to try more. The space was pretty nice and the beer was good. The lager was one of the best, but everything was pretty good. There was also a local cider on tap which was awesome as well. The bartender was really nice and she talked to us about other local places. This is definitely a great place and the bar is set up with big open air windows that could be opened in warm weather. It was a nice last stop.

Jan 16, 2017

We got up and made our way to Cornell University for sunrise. It's a gorgeous campus with historic buildings and great views of the town. We wandered around for the better part of an hour checking out the architecture and admiring the light as it appeared on the brick facade of the tower. Another nice start to a day and a good walk on the hilly grounds.

We had about two hours of driving down to Ricketts Glen State Park in PA. The trail was immediately icy, but this time there was a lot of snow to go along with it. The gorge trail was marked to stay off unless we had proper gear like crampons and axes, but we felt like we would be fine and could make the decision to turn back if it seemed dangerous.

The waterfalls were insanely beautiful covered in snow and ice. I can't believe I've never come here in winter before. This is another example of a place I didn't think could get any more beautiful, but here I am proved wrong again. We spent a lot of time at each set of falls admiring and photographing them from different angles.

The trail did end up getting a little precarious at times, but we both made it without incident. I am impressed even more with the Yaktrax after this. We decided to do the whole loop, which probably made it about 6 miles total, but it definitely didn't feel that long with so much to see.

Toward the end we were able to get behind this waterfall that was almost totally frozen over. The view from behind the ice looking down on the glen was so amazingly unique. We couldn't have been happier to get to see all of this.

Sadly we had to leave eventually, but some cake batter/chocolate twist from Vegan Treats cheered us up. We sat there eating the ice cream that the guy "poured too high" which we both agreed wasn't possible and no one would ever care. It was delicious and we each picked up another little treat for later. The drive home seemed super long in traffic and we stopped at Trader Joe's in Philly for groceries before heading back home. Just grocery shopping on the weekend like average people.