Winter in Utah.  There are two choices here.  We can be stoked, or we can be shut-ins that complain about the snow.  Though, maybe there is some middle ground were we can complain about the snow, but occasionally get stoked to use that snow as a source of entertainment.

Friday we were talking about the long weekend and decided we needed to get the kids out.  Our solution… Snow Shoeing!!!

Part of the inspiration came from the fact that our youngest asked for snow shoes for Christmas and we have only been out 1x this year.  In that half the family has their own, that left three of us to rent.  BYU Outdoor Unlimited https://outdoors.byu.edu is a local supplier of sports gear that tends to have fairly good deals on equipment.  For $9 a person, we picked up snow shoes for those of us lacking and we headed up to Rock Canyon.

Rock Canyon is a beautiful cliff surrounded area that is just a 5 min drive from BYU and within a few short minutes you can disappear into a canyon making you feel you are in the middle of no where.  We assumed that with the blizzard earlier in the day it would be a deterrent to having many people on the trails.  This assumption was not correct.  The canyon was not flooded with people, but we certainly did not hike in solitude.  A combination of other snowshoers, cross-country skiers, and sledders were all occupying the canyon.

For the first mile the snow shoes were probably not needed, as the trail was well packet with many visitors.  But as we got further up the canyon it did seem that the additional support of the snowshoes probably came in handy.  Our youngest two children seemed to tucker out fairly quickly (they are typically great hikers so it was hard to know if it was the added effort of using the snow shoes, or just a protest to being out in the snow).

It made for a fun day of hiking.  We only lasted about 2hrs, but they will likely be memorable ones.  Following the adventure we took them out to a local Chinese food joint called the Saigon Cafe.  This is a fun little place and the “family meal” style eating is our favorite way to go.  Dishes are roughly $8, we have each of us pick one meal and then we share them among ourselves.  All but our youngest and pickiest eater left with more in our bellies than we needed.  Great price and great food.  We will chalk today up to a winter win!

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