Having already taken a group bike ride with Twin Ports Cyclery to start the day, it was time to inaugurate the New Year with a family outing. We chose to go to Jay Cooke State Park, and then go downhill skiing at Mont Du Lac in Wisconsin.
Jay Cooke was packed with cross-country skiers. We aren’t ready to cross-country ski as a family yet, but I hope to change that starting this year. Instead we took a short hike and did some rock and ice climbing.
We didn’t go very far without skis, but it didn’t matter. Climbing rocks and ice is fun for kids, and it can be very challenging. We moved maybe a hundred feet down river, but had a blast.
The scenery at Jay Cooke is very special, and you don’t have to get far from the parking lot to enjoy it.
Once we had explored the icy river, we came back to the steep hillside and did some more climbing.
The rocks are tough to climb when they’re ice covered. But these little billy goats don’t give up easily.
Meanwhile, one member of our group was too chicken to go out on the ice. But it always feels nice to have a straggler in the group for increasing the balance of common sense on the adventure scales.
Jay Cooke has been elusive to me so far in terms of getting deep out in the park and really seeing its more wilderness areas. But for this day, even the Swinging Bridge was a happy place.
Following Jay Cooke we went downhill skiing for three hours, which is a whole different story. Suffice it to say, Adriana really started proving she can downhill ski without any help, and that she was ready for her first ski race, to be held on Sunday.
Overall, New Year’s was quite a day for us. A great start to 2016.
Duluthed 