RAIN, RAIN, RAIN

This weekend the temperatures dropped down into the negative teens at night but the days were about a balmy 10 degrees. Sunday it warmed up a little and was totally clear so we took Julia our for a little cross country ski with her grandparents, mom, and me. We went out the new Bigfork public XC trails near the grandparent's house and there was a ton of snow out there and amazing views. Earlier that morning I rigged up some plastic pipe I bought at the hardware store along with an old backpack waistband and some rope and we had a very doable towing system for Julias sled. We bundled her up good and threw a couple warmers in her boots and she was pretty into it. This morning I looked up the temp and it was showing -15 at 8:00 AM. It finally started warming up and actually snowed a little this evening. Now they are calling for 40 degrees and rain tomorrow. Gotta love NW Montana weather.

For the Thanksgiving weekend we headed up to Calgary to visit friends we worked with down in Ecuador, Jeff and Nancy and their new addition Gabriela. The drive up was a breeze. We stopped in Sparwood, BC and checked out their claim to fame, the "Largest Truck in the World." It was big. Rolling into Calgary, temperatures seemed like they were in the mid sixties, compared to the murky gray of the Flathead inversion. A couple other friends that we met down in Ecuador came over for dinner the first night we were there. The next day we headed out to Banff to go for a hike. There was very minimal snow and we walked up to the top of a hill next to Mt. Norquay that overlooked the whole valley. The clouds began to roll in and we headed back down and into Calgary. We headed home the next day and on our way out of town stopped by IKEA. That place is mindnumbingly huge. Completely powered by wind too. Impressive. We opted to take a the East side down assuming since both routes are relatively the same distance in the winter that they would be equally fast. Mistake. About the time we hit For McCleod it started dumping and didn't let up until we got to Kalispell. The drive was super sketchy and there was tons of snow on the road once we crossed the border. It is so remote that between the US border and Essex, near West Glacier we saw a total of about 4 cars in 2 1/2 hours of driving. It ended up taking about 2.5 hours longer East of the Divide. We rolled into a snowy Kalispell and the snow hasn't let up since.