A Snowy Weekend

I spent a good part of the weekend inside doing homework for my Master's class, grading papers and preparing for the shool week. It was snowing when I got up Sauturday morning and it got heavier throughout the day. It continued to snow today and we've got about 10 inches of accumulation. This afternoon, I'd had enough of sitting inside infront of the computer, so I grabbed my snowshoes and my dog and we headed out to the trails. We trotted down the snowy street and I strapped my snowshoes on once we got to the park. We ran the full loop along the Timber Trail and around Dixon Resevoir. We saw a couple of skiers and lots of ski tracks and the conditions were great. Pineridge was quiet and beautiful under all the new snow. Shadow and I got into a pretty good rhythm after he figured out he needed to stay behind me and avoid stepping on the back of my snowshoes. We saw Mary and her dog just starting out on their run on the west side of the resevoir. We exchanged some observations of the beauty of the afternoon and the magic of running on the snowy trails and then continued on our ways in opposite directions. I started to get really cold as we headed south in to a bit of a headwind and Shadow started to have trouble with snow building up in his pads. I pulled on my neck warmer and Shadow and I removed as much snow as we could from between his toes and headed home. The loop ended up being almost six miles and took us just over an hour. We had a great time, but were glad to get home to dry off, warm up and think about a hot dinner. I am definitely ready for warm spring days and clear trails, but it was good to get out and enjoy a snowy day on the trails.