My wife and I have been putting off this weekend getaway since November but finally made time to get the hell away from the place we live and go exploring and snowboarding. It's long overdue as I felt a huge change in my mood and outlook on life the farther away from home we got. Travel has always been fun for us but we've really enjoyed this trip so far!
Our destination for Saturday is Winterplace Ski Area in Ghent, West Virginia and boy is it cold! We rented a cabin through AirBNB and are very pleased with where we are staying but we didn't expect to see so much snow up here. Usually in the east there's only machine made snow on the ski slopes (and dirt, grass, and bare ground everywhere else) but this weekend we have the real thing and we're very excited!
There was a dusting on the ground about halfway through the 4 hour drive from East Tennessee to the southern part of West Virginia but the farther north we went the deeper the snow was. I put together some photos we snapped of the drive up here and you can see the change as we got into Virginia and West Virginia.
Interstate 77 goes directly underneath 2 mountains (each tunnel is close to a mile (1.6 km) long and after getting through the 2nd tunnel and into West Virginia we were shocked to see snow that was about 5-6 inches (12-15 cm) deep! Below shows the tunnels and their location on the map of Virginia / West Virginia.
When we came out the other side of the last tunnel everything was covered in a blanket of snow.We rarely get to experience this where we live (maybe once every 5 years) so it was a very pleasant surprise!
This morning it is 5 degrees F outside (-15 deg C) and we're waiting for it to warm up just a little before hitting the slopes. It's sunny and supposed to be above the freezing mark this afternoon which should make for great snowboarding conditions.
It'll also be nice to see what this place we're staying at looks like during the daytime (the city and area) because it was getting dark when we arrived yesterday.
I'm sure I'll have more to share after we get done spending the day snowboarding. We picked a great weekend to come up here and are very thankful.