Well, I’ve finally made it out of the house. Three weeks I’ve been in the United States now, and I’ve just been lazing around the house, staring out the windows. Apparently it’s winter over here – as evidenced by the large amounts of snow I’ve been seeing falling.

Anyway, we went to Whitegrass. A nice little cross country resort in the Canaan Valley in West Virginia. The trails go from 3200 ft to 4400 ft apparently – I think we camped close to 4400 ft. It was rather cold; I was glad for my fur.

West Virginia reminds me of Tasmania – an interesting mix of conservationist hippies, and redneck conservatives. Lots of snow around – four hours drive out to Whitegrass from DC, and there was snow the whole way. Camped in the snow both Friday and Saturday; there was consistent cover, but not much of a base, so in places it was just fluffy powder disguising clumps of rocks and bushes underneath. And I’ve now remembered all about those skiing muscles that I only use at that time of year.

There was supposed to be another big dump of snow in DC today – 6 to 10 inches. It spent most of the morning snowing, but not reaching the ground, due to the dry air. By the time it finally got around to building up on the ground, it was never going to make 10 inches. Mind you, it’s still going now, so there’ll be a fair bit of it around by tomorrow.

Russell the Peak Bagging Moose has also had a bit to say about the Whitegrass trip here.

After all the snow, I’m about to disappear for the weekend, to ski at White Grass: “a snowy corner of the Cabin Mountain range of West Virginia’s High Alleghenies”. Should be excellent :)

I’ve spent most of today staring out windows in amazement. I’m from Australia, we don’t have snow down there you know. The previous sentence was a lie – I think the main novelty is that I’ve never been in a city with snow before. And the only trees I’ve seen covered in snow are snow gums, and the whole effect is entirely different. Washington seems to close down when it snows. Everyone has either not gone to work, or come home early. The schools are closed, the malls are full, and there are constant updates on the TV about the weather situation, and where the crashes are interfering with traffic flow. I’m glad I’ve managed to catch at least one lot of snow before Spring kicks in properly.

Edit: Oh, but the climbing gym is closed because of the snow, so no climbing tonight :(

1 Well, I don’t have it yet, but the rental application has been approved. I haven’t actually signed the lease yet, that will be happening on Thursday hopefully.
2 Not house, so much as a one-bedroom apartment in a 1870s era townhouse.

Actually, they’re not that inexplicable. Photos from the George Washington Birthday parade in Alexandria yesterday (well, some of them are still inexplicable). I would have included captions explaining them all, but you’ve probably got as much idea what’s going on as I did (there’s only one extra photo under the cut by the way).

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Yes, while I was wandering around the cemetry finding the grave of the female stranger, I did find a few more interesting ones while I was at it. I’m only including the photo of Elsie though. She lived from 1894 – 1918. I couldn’t find any of her history.

Meanwhile, over the course of the weekend I’ve picked up some bargain items for my house. In fact there’s not too much else I need now. Went to an estate sale on Saturday – it was pretty alarming, the whole house was opened up and everything in there was for sale. People were throwing things everywhere. If you found something you wanted you had to guard it with your life, as if you turned away for a moment it would disappear. The house had belonged to an old physician and his wife, and they had obviously been gifted hoarders, who were big on Christmas decorations and buying useless things from the shopping channel.

I picked up some more useful items (including a bed and sofa) from a guy who is moving interstate on Wednesday, and needs to get rid of the stuff before he goes. There’s a lot of that here, people seem to be continually coming and going, and all of the bigger items just aren’t worth packing, so they just sell them for whatever they can get.