Waking up to a blanket of freshly fallen snow, I felt like a kid on Christmas morning! I absolutely could not wait to get to a quiet hiking trail and take in the transformation of forest to fairy tale!
Unfortunately... waiting is exactly what I had to. I had to wait for the snow to stop falling and the snow plows to catch up with getting the roads cleaned up.
And then after almost 45 minutes of white-knuckle driving to our favorite Ice Age Trail segment, the parking area wasn't plowed out.
Figuring I could just pull off as far as possible and road-park, I got stuck. While in the process of getting myself unstuck, a nice man pulled up in his pickup truck (extremely handsome and snacking on an apple - how adorable?!) and offered to give me a push while I rocked my transmission and got out of the hole I had dug myself. Luckily I got myself out without needing a tow truck and thanked the nice man for stopping to help.
After all that heart-racing activity, I didn't even feel like hiking anymore. Charlie had given up on us doing anything fun and was napping in the backseat and all I wanted to do was go home and take a nap.
But since I was all bundled up and had already promised Charlie a hike, we headed back into town where I was sure we could find an urban trail with a plowed-out parking area, or at the very least, safe roadside parking.
Someone decorated this tree with ornaments!
At Fern Island in downtown Wausau, we were rewarded with the idyllic scenery I was looking forward to, unfortunately it came with a "city-sounds" backdrop. Throughout our walk, we were surrounded by the sounds of traffic, sirens, beeping of snowplows backing up, kids playing with snowboards across the river and the maddening sound of steel snowplow blades dropping and grating along cement.
Charlie ended up getting spooked by all the sounds and bolted back toward the parking lot, with me still attached to her.
Still, we enjoyed the distinct beauty of a new snowfall and some fresh air. All is good. Lemons into lemonade.
**Thank you to the guy who kindly stopped to help me... and to all of you out there who take the time to offer help to a stranger.**
