Mother Nature dumped, like, six inches of snow on us last night.
Which, yunno. Awesome, but a day late!
I spent this past weekend yurt camping with friends at Arizona Nordic Village. We got back yesterday morning, and we could have used the snow Friday instead of Monday!
Regardless, it was a great weekend.
I got back from a week in Albuquerque (more on that later) late late Thursday night, and was a little concerned about our trip (we’d had it planned for about two months) because there wasn’t any snow here in Flag.
It’s always hit-or-miss with the higher elevations up on the San Francisco Peaks, though.
Regardless, we called Nordic Village and they confirmed that there was snow, and that snowshoes were required in order to preserve the snow they had.
Exciting!
I clocked out of work a few hours early Friday in order to pack up and head out.
I was a little concerned because while there was snow on the trails, there wasn’t a lot of it, and I was REALLY worried about damaging my snowshoes. Luckily, Nordic Village just gave us all rentals for free.
Because our yurt was in the “backcountry,” we had to snowshoe a mile in. While we all carried packs, luckily, Nordic Village offers gear shuttles if you have a backcountry yurt booked.
So, instead of eating backpacking food, we were able to shuttle in a bunch of camp kitchen goodies (yay cast iron!) and some bottles of wine and liquor.
We’d booked both the Sunflower Yurt and Columbine Yurt expecting to have about 12 people along on the trip, but a lot of people bailed, so we had a lot more space than we’d originally planned on.
We spent our first night making tacos and playing card games.
The yurts both had futons, bunk beds, tables, chairs and wood-burning stoves inside. Wood was included in our rental cost, so there were wood sheds outside, as well as a propane grill and picnic table at each yurt, and a cluster of portable toilets between the two.
I slept so freaking good next to that wood-burning stove lemme tell you.
On Saturday morning, our friend Mel hiked in to join us for breakfast. We did scrambled eggs, hash browns and blueberry pancakes.
Then, we spent our afternoon snowshoeing on the trails a bit. We went to the village lodge to refill our water, and then a few of us (not me) explored a few more trails, while the rest of us (me) went back to the yurts to read, knit and drink hot cocoa.
We did veggie brats and skewers for dinner the second night, and then had s’mores.
We played Uno, and while some of us finished up bottles of wine from the previous night, some of us (not me) were intrepid enough to invent the cocktail of the weekend: pumpkin spice tea with bourbon and maple syrup.
We let the wood-burning stoves lull us to sleep once again, and then we woke up Sunday morning for a quick breakfast of oatmeal before packing up our gear for the shuttles and then hiking out.
You can see why I’m glad we got free snowshoe rentals.
And, that was that! Ryan and I got back to our house and back to reality.
This past weekend was a great reminder of how lucky I am. I try not to forget it, but weekends in nature with the best friends definitely make me realize how very, VERY lucky I am to live here in Flagstaff!
