Ski de fond?...ski de fun!

This past weekend was a holiday weekend and we decided to take full advantage of it by trying something new: cross country skiing! While Glosette Girl and I have skied before it was Margot's first time.

It takes a special someone to enjoy cross country skiing. It's fun...but it's also hard work. In other words, a perfect activity for adults but kids...not so much. We really weren't sure if Margot would enjoy it.

So to make things extra special, instead of trying just any old trail in the Ottawa area (there are lots) we rented an airbnb in nearby Fort-Coulonge, Quebec to use as a home base for exploring the trails in a more rural and beautiful setting.

The weather has been up and down lately (either insanely cold or quite warm) so this was a bit of a gamble. For all we knew we'd end up trapped in a blizzard in the middle of nowhere. Luckily the ski gods were on our side and everything went off without a hitch.

For Margot's first taste of skiing we tried some trails in Bristol, which is about an hour from my house on the Quebec side of the border. Coincidentally there was a mini loppet going on and we were welcomed to the ski trials by lots of friendly loppet volunteers. The trails were flat and gentle - the perfect introduction for Margot and she picked it up right away.

And guess what? We were even photographed by a journalist and our pictures are going to be in the local paper! Pretty good if I do say so myself. Anyways, after 50 minutes of skiing or so we continued on to our final destination in Fort-Coulonge where we crashed for the night.

The next day, after a perfectly lazy morning, we hit up Le Patro, a park on the outskirts of town that was supposed to have great cross country trails. Again, a total gamble. And again...our luck held! The trails were so nice Margot wanted to just keep skiing. All told we skied for about 3 hours and in that whole time we saw two other people. We had a huge park to ourselves! When we finished we were pretty tired but in a happy sort of way.

So it looks like we've found a new activity to add to the family repertoire. I'm pretty psyched about that actually. Margot is growing up to be an interesting little spark and finding activities that I can share with her make it that much more fun to be a parent.

March 6th update! Here is the photo/article of us in the local paper - the Pontiac Journal: