Skiing in Maine

While I love winter for its sweaters, I love winter for another reason: skiing! Unfortunately, I don't get to go as often as I want to - skiing is a very expensive hobby to have (I guess my other hobbies of knitting and eating is too, depending on how often and how much you indulge)! This year, my first ski trip was a belated x-mas gift from a friend to Butternut, which is a little-known mountain in Massachusetts. The trails aren't steep at all, but they are very long and leisurely. A good mountain to start the season with! My next mountain had to be more challenging - turns out that my boyfriend's relatives in Maine all work on a ski resort and had mounds of ski passes to give away - all we had to do was find a way to get there and we could ski as many times as we wanted. Yes! The trip to the ski resort was a bit long -the infamous Fung Wah Bus to Boston took 4 hours (no crack smokers in the bathroom, nor an accidental viewing of the driver's porn collection on the bus' movie screen occurred this time), then a bus to Portland was another 2, then about another 3-4 hours to Rangeley, where Saddleback Mountain is. While it sounds horrible, it was totally worth it. While New York doesn't have a lick of snow left, Rangeley looked like a winter wonderland - when you get to the top of the mountain, you can see even see Canada. The winds from the north were pretty brutal - I thought my face was going to fall off, even with a ridiculous face mask on. Luckily, we were invited back to visit in March, when the weather is more temperate. Hurray!