Snow Shoeing

Today we went up by Stevens Pass and tried our hand at snow shoeing. I'd only done it briefly before.

Jonah's favorite part was knocking off the snow from the branches.

He likes his high ride. Apparently Dora was on his mind as he kept repeating, "Dora, Boots, We did it!"

Braeden thought it was cool to have big shoes with spikes. But eating the snow was definitely his hightlight!

Even though it was cold.

It wasn't all happy tunes. We found the signage a little unclear and accidentally took the wrong turn about halfway through, adding a mile or so (we intended to do only a 2.25 mile loop, but it ended up being closer to 3 miles) and a fair amount of time. Right after that Braeden thought he couldn't make it home and was feeling really discouraged, so Bri gave him a brief piggyback ride. He wanted down and was revved up to go after that. He did a great job overall, especially considering that I was told 1 mile of snowshoeing = 3 miles hiking; our hikes normally aren't longer than 4 miles. So this was a long day for him :) That extra time got to Jonah, and the last 10 minutes or so he wasn't happy (crying, "I done", "go home," etc) I felt awful for him. But as soon as I started up the car and DVD he calmed down quickly.