Struck Out

Fun shot of the sprinting trio as we conclude our morning outing. Wheeee!

Zipping along the fast & wide snowmobile trails in Swan Valley.

Today comes with a nice "shot from the front" of the skijoring trio and then an action video of us running towards and on by Nancy on the side of the trail.

Happy trio towing me quickly by Nancy on the sideline.

Now the video counterpart of the prior photo. We start out as a little dot way up the trail and then come more & more into view as we sprint towards and then on by Nancy. A rare video including me and not just the Siberian Huskies from the GoPro on my chest.

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

The goal of today's outing was to introduce young Rudy to the dog sled teams from Good Times Adventures that run these trails at Swan Valley. Usually we save runs on these trails for weekends to get the most interactions with the dog sled teams. We decided to introduce Rudy to the fun on a weekday thinking there would be a little less traffic and good training for Rudy. But, we over planned :(  We did not encounter any teams on the trails this morning. We like to go out early, especially now that daytime temperatures are getting well above freezing, so targeted interacting with dog sled teams on their 9am tours (this always works on weekends). But, not today, apparently Good Times does not run 9am tours on weekdays this late in the season. We did see evidence that they still have 10am tours on weekdays; but we were already done with our morning outing well before 10am :(

There are signs all over the trails similar to the one below which reads "Caution. Watch for Sled Dogs on Trail" with a cute cartoon of a sled plus dogs on the top and bottom. That is what is supposed to happen: encounter teams and have fun flirting and learning to "on by".

"Watching.... Watching!!!!" say Zorro & Jack who have run these trails with dog teams
many times.
"Not sure what I'm watching for yet..." adds novice Rudy.

Here we go, flying by the Caution Sign and running & watching for dog sled teams all morning long. While we did not see any, we did have a lot of fun running :)

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

Searching and searching for teams to flirt with can wear a youngster out - just ask Jack & Rudy:

"On fire, must roll snow angels to cool our jets!" demonstrate the young goofs.
"Kids nowadays, who can figure them out?" says Zorro.

While we failed to find any teams to flirt with, we still had a very fun outing:

"Running on snow is a treat in itself!" say happy Zorro & Jack.
"Ok, so what was supposed to be the big deal about these trails?" asks puzzled Rudy as he
still does not know why we drove farther than usual to get skijor what were empty trails today :)

The season for dog sled tours is rapidly coming to a close at Good Times (they are limited by the forest service, not snow, for how long they can operate each winter). We may try to go back on Saturday or Sunday to hopefully introduce Rudy to the fun of flirting with the dog teams.

But, an outing alone on the trails is better than none at all: 5.9 miles traveled with 500 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 22 MPH.

2018/2019 Season to Date: 82 days on the trails covering 447.9 miles with 40,200 feet of elevation climbed.