Thursday, February 14, 2008

McCall Winter Carnival

Dave, Aaron and I (plus 2 Havanese) headed to McCall for the 2nd weekend of the annual Winter Carnival in McCall, Idaho. Full pictures here. Since Dave and I met, we have spent president's day weekend in McCall with all the kids. We used to ski but as the kids grew and their interest waned, we stopped going. Last year, Dave and I (plus doggies) drove up for the day on the actual carnival weekend. We stopped for breakfast in Cascade which took 2 hours and caused us to get behind a huge accident that had happened right in town as the parade was starting. Needless to say, we missed the parade, but walked around town with the girls in their stroller and had a nice day anyway. This year we decided to stay over, and to go the next weekend so there would be less people. Well, I didn't realize that they had moved the harmonica festival to McCall and on that weekend, so it was still crowded but not nearly as bad as it was the weekend before.

It was the first trip for the new Acura MDX that Dave bought last Fall. Aaron was excited and of course immediately hooked up the PS2 and wireless headphones and started gaming. I had my ipod and was listening to podcasts as I read RSS feeds from offline google reader. Poor Dave was left to listen to XM all alone on the wonderful 10 speaker dolby surround system.

The drive up was a bit slow since the roads were snow covered, but not bad at all. We all got off work and school early and headed out about 2pm. We arrived in McCall after about 4:30p and stayed at the AmericInn which was excellent. They had an indoor hot tub and pool and a great breakfast each morning. They of course allowed dogs and I always enjoy staying with other dog people as they are usually friendly.

Friday night, I had made reservations for The Mill which is Dave and Aaron's favorite place to get prime rib. Dave had the "enormous" size which was something like 44 oz and Aaron had the "medium" which was still a huge 36 oz. They both did really well and managed to eat almost all of it. I was stuffed with my measly 12 oz New York steak.

Saturday it was snowing, but fairly nice out as we headed into town to look at the sculptures and go to a little Craft festival. We even rode the bus into town so we could leave the MDX safe in the hotel parking lot. We took pictures of most of the sculptures and even found Aaron a new pair of snow pants in the local thrift store since we found out after we arrived that he didn't have his anymore. He was also fascinated by the huge icicles hanging around various buildings. He had some fun with those. We came back to the hotel in the afternoon and Aaron and I headed to the pool. Aaron met some kids his age and had a great time playing pool games. I sat with my laptop and ipod and was of course happy to have time to do that. The girls were really well behaved and did well in the crates in the hotel while we were out and of course enjoyed the longs walks in the deep snow. There was a storage facility near the hotel that I walked them around and I let them off leash a few times and they ran crazy.

Saturday night we headed out to Mexican. We decided to walk since it was close by and it was a nice evening. It was snowing pretty heavily by dark and on the way back from dinner, we saw the fireworks that launched over the lake. I had never seen fireworks in the snow before, it was pretty cool.

Sunday we had breakfast and then headed home as it was Superbowl Sunday and Dave wanted to see the game. We unpacked and had a nice relaxing, quiet, Superbowl in our jammies and ordered chinese food for dinner.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

McCall is a beautiful place! I stayed in a cabin there 2 summers ago, a relaxing place to be. I'm interested in the Winter Carnival!!

nina michelle said...

Gosh, I haven't been to the McCall Winter Carnival in years. I bet this year it was spectacular!