Picnic season 'tis upon us

Yes, the snow in our backyard is still up to the top of the picnic tables, even though spring is only days away. Nothing has melted yet. And it has been the best snow year this decade, but a Caribbean island sure would be nice about now. Last week, Jenny and I went to Juneau, Alaska to go skiing at EagleCrest ski resort. It took a day of travel each direction, partly because of a 5 hour ferry ride from Skagway. Juneau is only about 25,000 people, and the ski hill is on a mountainous island across a narrow (river-sized) inlet from Juneau. It is a small hill with only 2, 2-person chairlifts, but their snow is amazing. They are closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so when we arrived Thursday morning, there was 2 feet of untouched powder over the entire hill. We had white out conditions Thursday and Friday, but I have never snowboarded in so much amazing snow. On Saturday, our last day, we awoke to clear blue skies. That meant it didn't give us another foot of powder like the previous day, but we had amazing scenery and could see surrounding coast mountains. Mid-way through the morning, after avalanche control had been completed, they opened up a couple of powder-filled bowls, so we had spring-like ski conditions with perfect visibility and fresh bowls of powder to explore all day. Unfortunately, the photo-bug never bit me on that trip, so I missed out on a lot of once-in-a-lifetime winter mountain scenery shots. To make up for it, I give you a picnic table...