It’s raining today. Raining! Not snowing, well, sort of sleeting, but I’m calling it rain and that means spring!! So, as we near the end of winter, I figured I’d share a few of our favorite moments where we really made the best of this crazy cold, long, snoooooowy winter we’ve had. I took the photo above on the coldest day of the year (it was somewhere around -40 F), and I was fairly skeptical about why I was living here, rather than, say, Hawaii. So, here are some of the reasons why we love Minnesota. Just so we remember. Because sometimes it’s easy to forget. 
We went tubing for the first time this year and I can’t believe I’ve been missing out on this for the last 22 years that I’ve more or less lived here! So. Much. Fun. Like can’t wipe that ridiculously silly grin off your face kinda fun. Kinda like this other activity we did this winter. But, as you are laugh-screaming while your face is sprayed with snow as you speed down the slope, you can’t help but have an inkling that, at any moment, this could be a serious disaster if you were to let go. But no matter, you keep holding on for dear life, tethered to your friends tubes, and as you reach the bottom, you all collapse in a pile of laughter and relief that you are still alive. And alive is how you feel. And, as soon as you can stand again, you find yourself running back to do it all again. 
Our friend taught us to loop the leashes of the tubes to the handles of each other’s tubes so we could all go down together in a cloverleaf formation. It made the ride much faster, and ensured we would reach the end of the track (which didn’t always happen if you went solo). Not to mention, it increased the laughter and screaming by 10-fold (in a good way). 
Almost as good as going down, is the moving walkway you get to use to go back up. No more huffing and puffing it back up the sledding hill. This is luxury sledding. But like most luxuries it’s not the cheapest of winter activities. It’s $15/person for 2 hours (but that’s plenty of time). Wednesday and Thursday nights after 4pm it’s 2-4-1, though, so try to go mid week (next year of course, since we aren’t going to have any more snow this year, right? Riiiight?) There are various places to go tubing around the metro area, but we went to Elm Creek Winter Recreation Area in the Three Rivers Park system. It had a trick snowboarding hill next to the tubing hill and lots of cross country ski trails, neither of which we tried out, but both of which looked fun, and were also lit for night boarding/skiing. 
Look at all the snow! And speaking of snow, we also had a visit from my mother-in-law, Cindy, this February. She lives in Hawaii, so it was quite a big deal that we got her to visit during the coldest, snowiest winter on the books. We were determined to make her love it and enjoy the best of Minnesota winter, and I think we did a pretty good job because by the end she told us she might just come back every year!
Although she grew up in Colorado, she hadn’t seen snow in years. She couldn’t help but make a snowball immediately on arrival. Look at her face! Pure joy! Shouldn’t everyone get to experience that kind of joy for winter? What would it take for us Minnesotans to feel like that again? 
That night we took her to the Luminary Loppet, an annual February event in Minnesota on Lake of the Isles, where they create a loop trail on the lake lit with ice luminaries. You can ski, snowshoe or walk the path when it’s all lit up. It costs about $20 per person, but it’s totally worth it. It’s beautiful and there are hot chocolate and cookie stops along the way, as well as special sculptures. This year there was icehenge and Ice-ter Island! Who would have thought we’d find a moai all the way in Minnesota? Of course it would have to be an ice luminary moai. The Loppet has other events too that take place over the whole weekend, including lots of ski races that are fun to watch if it’s not too cold. There’s even Skijoring, where people ski with their dogs! 
See how well we bundled up my mother-in-law? It was pretty cold that night, a little below 0 degrees Fahrenheit, but she insisted she stayed warm. 
We went back in daylight to take better photos of the moai. Here’s Ta’u giving a hongi to his ancestor (a traditional Polynesian greeting in which you touch noses). He greeted the moai this way the night before, too, and the people nearby asked him if he had a headache (and was touching the ice to make it feel better). Oh, Minnesota. 
We walked the Luminary Loppet, since we weren’t sure how my mother-in-law would do skiing it her first night in town. But later in the week we did get out cross-country skiing together. We still had to bundle up, but it was a great time. And Cindy proved that skiing is like riding a bike. She hadn’t done it since living in Colorado in college, but you’d never have known it had been that long. 
We made sure to have a thermos of hot chocolate on hand after we finished, because what’s a Minnesota winter without hot chocolate to warm you up? Mmmmmm! 
Thanks for visiting us Cindy! We had a blast enjoying winter through the eyes of someone who is excited by everything as if it’s their first time experiencing it. It really made us realize that winter is not as bad as we think sometimes, and there’s always fun to be had in some way, even on the coldest days. So come visit in winter!
