A wonderful Christmas!

So we were at Eagle River, spending the evening before Christmas Eve warming up in front of a fire place with friends, planning to spend Christmas Eve snowmobiling! Fun, frolic and snow! Chilling our cola's in the snow that had accumulated in the log cabin's balcony, playing cards, enacting dumb charades - well, we tried and sometimes enthusiastically succeeded and otherwise failing miserably, which always ended with an 'awww!!!' but having a good time altogether…. Christmas Eve was something to look forward to! SNOWMOBILING - The craziest thing I had ever done in my 22 years of living…Boy, was I thrilled?! The excitement had rushed up so much that I just couldn't get a wink of sleep…I was thrilled.

The day of Christmas Eve had dawned upon us and oh! was it wonderful?! It was snowing and we all were hurrying with our warmest gear out to the snowmobile rentals…once there, we suited up in bib and boots, jackets and helmets and came out like firemen and pilots…so proud of nothing! An instructor gave us all the details we had to know about driving, including how to start and stop the engine - yeah, real amateurs - us! The thing about snowmobiling is that it is so close to riding a bike; something that one cannot easily do in the United States of America, as much as we can back in India, so this was the 'REAL DEAL'. Trust me, the feeling  was worth every penny. 

We were four couples, each one with a two seater, set off to one of the most memorable days of winter time. It was breezy, snowing and the handgrips on the vehicle, toasty warm for the biting cold weather that we were rushing in to…the day passed with a lot of enthusiasm, the cold was unbearable but we drove, zoomed and wheeled without a care in the world, for over 30 miles; sometimes stopping and crossing over into a different trail, meeting other bikers, taking pictures of the wonderful setting, nature had given us, filming videos of each one of us driving the vehicle, zooming on to doing even crazier things - for instance, me doing a 'wheelie' on a snowmobile with my husband at the backseat and at times the situation being vice versa too! There is something simply incredible about being thrilled out of one's wits!

Also, there is something wicked about nature - just when we were soaking up in its beauty, we were driven to take its call! And where are we? right in the middle of the woods, with nothing but snow around us and not a snack shack in sight! Nature tested us real bad until we finally found a gas station to relieve ourselves - THAT was after we got lost in the woods, a couple of times, going out of the trail looking for some place to attend to ourselves…Shew! the things we did and said until we got to the blessed gas station! The tracks also led us to try out something courageous - bike on the frozen lake, but due to all the trial nature caused us, we were headed in the exact opposite direction; Now that is something I am going to catch up on during our next  wild ride! We drove until the evening sky dawned upon us calling dusk, making us head back to the lodge, tired, hungry and obviously longing for more on the mean machine! 

Saying goodbye to the 'hunk of metal', the next morning, was the most tearing thing we ever faced; well, that's why the statement holds good every darn time - "All good things come to an end". "Nooooooo", I said, "this is not the end…we still have a lot of snow and a couple more months of winter…this can't be…I'll be back!"; Well, tantrums - sometimes they work and at other times, you just have to live with it! Goodbyes are always sad, and I still miss the number 21 ski-doo. 

Deciding to get back on road as soon as we could, we dropped off the vehicles and started driving back home; all of us were too hungry to drive any further and too tried from searching desperately for a place to eat. It was Christmas Day, and what were we thinking by not stocking up on some food? All the stores were closed, gas stations too, so even the thought of filling ourselves with chips and chocolate wasn't even the closest we were getting to… as we drove a hundred miles,  we were praying to practically everything we saw, the one lonely dog that was trying to cross the street (yes, it did happen - a very unusual sight, though), the trees that had shed their leaves, the strange guy who was jogging out in the cold - I still wonder 'why'?, and to the Lord letting him know that it was Christmas day and he isn't helping!, until we came by a tiny town whose streets were filled with stores, restaurants and what not, but yeah, all closed - and then the spotlight!, I spotted this one quaint little restaurant called 'Two Angels' with the lights that said "OPEN"…boy, could we heard the angelic bells ringing in our bellies, I mean our hearts or what? We had no second thoughts and I parked the car and hopped off into the restaurant clicking my heels in joy! Now, that, my dear people, is a miracle! Who knew that something like this would ever happen? This lovely, blessed restaurant beat all the big, fancy, food giants that proclaim a 24 hour service - where were they on Christmas day? The food was BEYOND awesome and the warmth that was in that restaurant drained all the blues and pain out of us and sent us back home, happy, refreshed, full and in divine spirits!