practicing cello

Tree down

Douglass Park was once a quarry, which means the soil is on the thin side. Combine that with years of drought followed by lots of rain, and you get fallen trees.



(We lost a tree from a big rain in 2014, too.)

Mini-Rhinoceros Strandbeest

Soren and I assembled the second strandbeest model today.





Here it is in action.


And here it is with its sibling.

Sorensen's Resort

The boys get a week off from school in February, and this year we went up to Alpine County (south of Lake Tahoe) for a few days at Sorensen's Resort.



The Sorensen's branding caught our eye for some reason.



It was pretty snowy on our drive up, but we had no problem getting there.


Sorensen's is in Hope Valley, and the surrounding mountains made for great sunsets.

Sorensen's: River House

Sorensen's is on CA-88, about 20 miles south of Lake Tahoe. There are about 30 cabins in the resort proper, but we stayed in River House, which is across the road on the other side of West Fork Carson River.


River House.



The view of the river.


The boys slept upstairs, surrounded by many pillows.


At night, we turned the temperature down, but perhaps a bit too much. This what the kitchen window looked like (inside the house!) one morning.


When we were inside, we spent our time in the living room reading, playing board games or building with legos.




Getting ready for fun in the snow.

Sorensen's: West Fork Carson River

Here's the river next to our house.

Sorensen's: Sledding

The resort features a rather steep sledding hill that runs between the cabins. (In the third video, below, Sigrid starts from the middle of the hill, which gets sharply steeper above.)






A hard day on the sledding hill can lead to a berry cobbler.

Sorensen's: Snoeshoeing

The Kwundersons go snowshoeing. This is the meadow across the river from our house (on the other side of the road from the resort proper).





I took a short solo trek up a slope and got a different view.

Sorensen's: Hot tub

Our house had a hot tub. Unlike our Truckee hot tub from January, which couldn't keep the temperature up, our River House hot tub was a wonderful 104°F.

Sorensen's: Grover Hot Springs State Park

On our last day, we zipped a bit further down the road to Grover Hot Springs State Park in Markleeville.


The hot pool. It's like a giant hot tub.


This is the spring that feeds the pool.


There's also a cold pool. We all dipped ourselves in it. It was cold!


There's something amazing about a hot pool surrounded by snow.

Sorensen's: Coda