Weekend Getaway

Mommy Ambuel here. I'm happy to report that Randy (Gadget) and I had a 4-day weekend getaway in upstate New York all to ourselves (sans kids) thanks to Grammy and G-pa (who are exhausted and now in need of their own vacation)!

These are our friends, the Tubridy's, who graciously shared their home with us.
This is the view out the back of their house. Amazing!

Our biggest item on the agenda was ice climbing. Randy has been trying to convince me to do this for the 5+ years we've known each other. In a moment of insanity, I agreed to it.

The ice really is quite beautiful to look at.

A little scary to contemplate climbing.

What was I thinking?

Randy went up first to show us how its done. Of course he made it look easy.

I was the only thing holding him back from plummeting to his death. Again, what was I thinking?

I finally mustered up the nerve to give it a try.

I actually made it to the top (about 40ft. up) and made it back down in one piece. I was thrilled to have conquered the ice. And I may even do it again someday. If you look behind us, you can see that there are other crazy people out there with us. There was actually a wait for people to ice climb by the time we were done.

In addition to the harness used for any type of climbing. There are two other pieces of gear required for ice climbing.This is called an ice tool. Don't mess with anyone holding one of these.

These are ice climbing boots and crampons. They look pretty wicked right?!

My choice of activities for the weekend was cross-country skiing. At first glance, this seems like a much more subdued acitivity, but, amazingly, this proved to be more dangerous than ice climbing. This is one of the only times when both Randy (Gadget) and I are upright on our skiis.

Randy on frozen McKenzie Pond.

We were also able to enjoy some local flavor at the Seneca Lake Winter Festival. This is an ice castle and ice pirate ship. The fireworks display set the pirate shipe sail on fire and the fire department had to come out and extinguish the fire. It was quite a comedy to watch. And I'm sure that all the excitment made the front page of the local newspaper.

Me sitting on an adirondack chair made of ice.

We also caught a round of competition for the 41st Luge World Championships at the Lake Placid Olympic Sports Complex.

It was cool to be able to get to see them up close.

Hot cocoa with Schnapps was fun too!