We got our first significant snowfall of the season today, so after I got off work I took my family out to ride in it! We rode the 4-wheelers straight from home and went to Kenilworth and back. It snowed for the entire two and a half hours that we were riding, but it was a pellet-like snow rather than flakes. None of us enjoyed being pelted by the snow at higher speeds on the gravel roads, but once we reached the rougher dirt roads closer to Kenilworth and slowed down a bit, the pelting subsided. There were a lot of deer out–it seemed that if we stopped anywhere long enough, a few would pop their heads up above the sagebrush to check us out. Strangely (or maybe not so, for me), I had the song “Sleigh Ride” in my head while we were riding, and I even busted out singing it a few times during the ride. 😀
Near Kenilworth I inadvertently ran my ATV into a deep rut. The road ahead of me had looked perfectly flat, but in reality there were some very deep ruts that had been filled with water from the heavy rains from last week. Once the rain subsided and temps got colder, the top layer of water froze and the rest of it slowly seeped into the ground. When the snow fell and covered the ice, it left a deceptive trap just waiting for someone to come along and spring it. I hit one of the ruts and broke through the ice, and my 4-wheeler tipped over and almost threw Bradley and me off. We got off and realized what had happened, and I was able to just back the 4-wheeler out easily. We stopped to drink some hot chocolate near Kenilworth, but by then it was getting late and if we didn’t hurry we’d be riding home in the dark. We took the highway for a couple of miles, then turned onto another gravel road that saved us quite a bit of time over returning the same way we’d come. We stopped once on the way home so Traci could warm her hands on the exhaust of her machine, and we made it home before it was fully dark.

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