The best laid plans, part 2

I flew in Friday afternoon from Tokyo, and was pretty jet lagged, as you'd expect. After sleeping for 13 hours (!), on Friday night, I woke up & was ready to go on Saturday. We ran a few errands, and found a last minute booking for a hotel in Lake Tahoe for the long holiday weekend. We packed up food & our ski gear, & hit the road.

The condo unit we booked was tiny, but right on the lake & lovely. We made pizza, fed everyone dinner last night, sat by the firepit with a glass of wine, & then went to sleep. I was awake until midnight or so, trying to get my body to adjust to the correct time zone.

When we woke up today, the weather forecast called for rain at all of the local ski resorts. We had of course checked the forecast before we booked a hotel yesterday, and it was supposed to be cold & snowy. How quickly things can change!

We woke up reasonably early this morning, made breakfast, packed up & hit the road to go to Heavenly, which was showing the best possible forecast. We arrived at Heavenly just in time to find that the resort was closed for 30 minutes due to a lightning storm. It was also raining. . . We left to go get hot chocolate, and ended up at Harrah's hotel/casino. I took the kids to the arcade for a bit, where we discovered that the lifts would be closed for at least another 90 minutes. At that point, we knew we were scrapping skiing, as it's expensive & we wanted to be on the road reasonably early to out run the snow storm that was expected in the late afternoon. M played a half hour or so of craps while I was with the kids, and ended up winning enough to pay for just over the hotel cost. The kids had an amazing time at the arcade, and we hit the road back home around lunch time.

It was nothing like the trip we'd hoped for/expected, but I felt lucky that we all handled the change in plans well & rebounded. Also, the kids were amazing both ways (the drive is four hours). We came home in time to make dinner, and appreciate the fact that everyone in our house is flexible (or, easily bribed by arcades?) & had some laughs over wine/whiskey (me + M) while the kids showered & we unpacked.

Apparently, skiing in the bay area is unpredictable. We'd love to make it a regular thing, but our luck so far hasn't been great. We did make a few frugal choices, so more on that tomorrow! I need to get some sleep & catch up on life before heading to LA on Tuesday. . .