Island Park 2012

Mike's birthday was last week and since he is always up for an adventure, I thought this would be a great birthday surprise.

We were able to load up some borrowed snow machines and head to Island Park for some fun. As you can tell from the picture, we don't have any snow at home to ride on!

We got to the hotel in Island Park Friday afternoon and were able to play around in the snow for a bit before it got dark. We ate dinner at Trouthunter - which was AMAZING!!!

Then we just spent the evening together hanging out - just the 3 of us. Kenneth and I both fell asleep by 10pm! (I know we are such party animals)

When we woke up the next morning, this was the view out our back door. Plenty of snow and right on the river. It was beautiful.

By the time we got ready to go it was already snowing, but a nice soft snow. It was a hazy day, but the fog wasn't too bad.

We headed out from the hotel and rode down to Mesa Falls. You can only access this area by snow machine in the winter time. It was a gorgeous ride and we had a ton of fun. This was Kenneth's first time on a full size machine and he had no problems. He loved it.

We only saw one other group the whole way to the falls. We had the trail all to our selves. We made it to Upper Mesa Falls and went right down to the walkway. Most of the walkway trail had snow almost to the top handrail. To get down to the bottom platform that looks out over the falls you have to go down lots of steps. The problem was so much snow. It was basically sliding (not walking) to the bottom of the stairs. It was easy going down, but a little harder trying to come back up.

This picture is of us sitting on a bench. The back rest of the bench was only sticking out of the ground about 4 inches. The rest of it was buried in snow.

Mike and Kenneth took a short break from the trail and went and played in the powder a little bit. My machine had started to overheat so we just turned it off to cool down and I took pictures as they played around me.

This is Upper Mesa Falls.

We headed back to the hotel. Lots more people were out riding on our way back. It had been snowing the whole time we were gone and was starting to get a little foggy. We ate lunch and by then the snow was really coming down. Since my machine was having problems, I stayed at the hotel and just relaxed while Mike and Kenneth went and played for a little while. They came back about an hour later and said that due to the storm, they had very little visibility. We loaded up the trailer and headed back home.

We had a fabulous time!!

I think Mike will remember this birthday surprise for a long time.

A big THANK YOU to my boss for making the arrangements! We truly appreciate it!