Advent Calendar December 11: Holiday Travel

Above is an image from http://www.city-data.com/ of a map of Reservoir State Park in Niagara Falls, NY, and it shows the extent of my travels during the holiday season.

We stayed close to home for the holidays. Western NY winters weren't exactly ideal conditions for travel. One travel destination whenever there was snow, however, was the reservoir for some sledding.

Not far from our house on Garlow Road was the reservoir. On one side was a popular sledding site. We'd put on our heaviest socks, and put them over the socks we already had on. Actually, we'd put the outer socks over our pants legs and tape the socks to the pants. (Taping the socks to the pants kept the snow that would inevitably go up the snow-pant legs from also going up the regular pants-legs and onto our bare legs ). We'd put on the snow pants. We'd put on our boots. We'd put on our heaviest sweaters. We'd put on our snow jackets. We'd put on the warmest, non-knit gloves we had, but only after we'd put on the scarves. We'd put on the fancy-schmancy SKI MASKS and smear our lips with chapstick. We'd gather up our friends, and traipse off to the house of the unfortunate parent that was driving us. We'd pack up our sleds. We'd climb in the car and off we'd go.

We'd get to the reservoir and traipse up the slope and to the starting point.

And just as promptly as we'd said "YES" to the suggestion of going sledding.....

We'd have to go potty.

Too bad, though. There were no potties at the reservoir.

(sleds image from www.lakewoodconferences.com; ski mask image from www.wavecaps.com)