Snow?!!

It normally doesn't snow here!  Well, except occasionally...like one time in the 60's, again about nine years ago, and last week on New Years Eve.  On those rare events that it has snowed, it hasn't been much and it melted quickly.  This time, it snowed all night long and lasted for days!  It was amazing and beautiful and cold!  I wish it snowed here more often!

I had plans to meet a friend for breakfast that was in town for the holidays.  So, I wasn't able to go out that morning to see it.  Luckily, my hubby and daughter headed out first thing to see it and took pictures.  So, these pictures are compliments of my dear hubby.

They headed up to my hubby's parent's house in the nearby hills first.  It didn't snow at our house but did so in the hills just up the road, all of the hills and mountains surrounding our area, and in the neighboring cities of Murrieta and Temecula.  It's so rare that it was even on the national news!

What an incredible sight!

This is my mother-in-law's garden.  She had to rescue her zucchinis from the snow!

It's never looked like this around the pool!  Brrrr!

A cool shot of the tractor.

We store our trailer up there.  We should probably go up to make sure there weren't any leaks from snow sitting on top and melting for days!

Beautiful!

I wonder how this cactus is doing after that shocking blast of cold?!

It was really cold here for days after that but it's now back up into the 70's during the day.  Ahhhh!  The reason we live here!  But, I sure wouldn't mind seeing this more often in the winter.  It's beautiful and we sure could use the water!

Chilly Surprise

My daughter was able to come home from college for the entire week of Thanksgiving.  She loved that and so did we.  Even though she had lots of school work and music to work on, we made sure to get out and have some family fun.  One of the things we did was to go for a hike up in the San Jacinto Mountains above Idyllwild.

We started out early and stopped for a delicious and hearty breakfast at the Mountain Center Cafe.  Then, we were off to the ranger station for a trail permit and parking pass.  While we were there we looked at all the fun stuff in their little shopping corner.  We ended up buying some little trail buddies.  I got a little Smokey Bear that I clipped onto my pack.  Isn't he cute?  I love his little hat and jeans!

My daughter got an adorable little owl that got to peek out of her pack for the day.

Hubby got a cute little raccoon but somehow I missed on getting a photo of it.  It was perfect for him as he's always had a 'coon tail on the back of his bike helmet.  In fact, that's how he's recognized at mountain bike races and by other riders because he's had that for so long.  He likes raccoons.

We were amazed at how many cones there are on the Sugar Pines this year!  They're loaded!  There were thousands of them on the ground too.  They're such pretty cones!

It was a beautiful day!  A little chilly but sunny and the trails weren't crowded.

Then...we came along something we didn't expect to see...snow!  We hadn't had much precipitation before that and what we did have was from a warm storm.  So, we didn't think they'd gotten any snow up there.  Hmmm?!

The higher we got, the more there was.  Some sections were a little slick but we could still hike through with caution.  

However, the trail at the top had a lot more snow and lots of ice that made it just too slick and dangerous.  There were tracks from people who'd hiked when it was slushy but it had frozen over into solid ice.  That's just not fun or safe....especially when the trail runs along a drop off!

It sure was pretty!  It was also very cold!  The temperature dropped from about 50 when we started to just above freezing with cold wind.

We were really looking forward to the views up on Tahquitz Peak.  Since we weren't able to get that far, we took advantage of a big flat area with a view and hiked out to see it.  We thought we might be able to warm up a bit in the sun but that wind was just so icy!  

Our daughter hasn't hiked to Tahquitz Peak yet and was so excited to get there.  But, she was impressed with the view from this spot.  On a clear day the Pacific ocean can be seen in the distance.

Looks like we won't be hiking this trail again until next spring.