While we didn't make it up to the snow last year, today we drove up to Nyack in Blue Canyon. Across from a snow park where we would have to pay, we found a nice open area with a view of the mountains and few people to contend with. This was the same place we took Anna to 2 years ago for her first trip to the snow with the church youth. Anna had a lot of fun and we met several other families who also found this free "snow park". Here is a video of Anna and me sledding down the hill.
We had a bigger than usual storm with lots of rain and wind. While the surrounding area did suffer some damage with fallen trees and limbs crushing a few cars we came out of it relatively unscathed. The only near casualty was a small tree in our back yard that was blown over. It fell against the deck so it didn't come completely out of the ground. So, I put in some big stakes and used two small come-a-long style synchs to pull the tree back into place. Hopefully it recovers.
Lots of people were without power for several days but we only had a minor 5min outage the first morning. My office was half down for 3 days though.
