Trip to Pinetop

We rent­ed a house from the 28^th of decem­ber to the 2^nd of Jan­u­ary. When we arrived, there was no snow, it was only in the moun­tains on the ski slope, but on Decem­ber 31 it start­ed to snow very heavily.

Trip to the mountains.

At 11 o’clock in the morn­ing, on Decem­ber 28, we loaded the car with clothes and food and set off on a jour­ney. First, we had to go to a sports store, where my daugh­ter and her hus­band rent­ed skis, and my grand­son got boots. The daugh­ter and her hus­band have their own boots and soft inserts in the boots are spe­cial­ly adjust­ed (with the help of a spe­cial stove) accord­ing to their leg con­fig­u­ra­tion, and they rent skis so as not to store them at home. The grand­son had both boots and skis, but before the trip it turned out that the boots were too small for him. I was equipped with what is called “with the world on a string.” Skis, boots, gog­gles, ski pants were giv­en to me by my chil­dren’s friends, a jack­et from my son-in-law.

The sports shop only bought me a hat. In the store, every­one fit­ted ski bind­ings under their boots, and we set off. At first, our path ran along moun­tains and cac­ti. After about an hour and a half, we drove up to the city of Payson (Payson). This is a small town with a pop­u­la­tion of about 16 thou­sand and a milder cli­mate than in Phoenix. Even in sum­mer there is no such strong heat, so the veg­e­ta­tion here is dif­fer­ent: spruces, pines and decid­u­ous trees. We refu­eled in Payson and drove down Hwy 260 towards Pinetop.

The place where we rent­ed a house is called Show Low and it is locat­ed near Pine­top at an alti­tude of about 2000 m. We are four of us, a fam­i­ly of friends with two sons, a daugh­ter, her hus­band and a small child and their two dogs. There was enough space for every­one, because the house is large, two-sto­ry. There are no flowerbeds and veg­etable gar­dens in the yard, only pines, fir-trees and arborvi­tae like in a forest.

Skiing

When we arrived, there was no snow around. To the moun­tain where peo­ple ski and where there is snow, it was nec­es­sary to dri­ve anoth­er 40 min­utes through Pine­top to the Indi­an reser­va­tion. Pine­top is also a small city, immersed in huge pines and firs (the name of the city speaks for itself, pine — pine). Along the way, there were many camp­sites and resorts. On the high­way, every now and then came across warn­ing signs that deer could pass in this place. Sev­er­al times they were seen run­ning across the road, either a fox or a coy­ote. After a while, we drove into a Native Amer­i­can reser­va­tion. I used to think that a reser­va­tion is a fenced-in place where you can’t get very far. It turned out that just hang­ing a large infor­ma­tion board that this is the ter­ri­to­ry of the Nava­jo Indians.

But with all this, the pover­ty of the shacks on the reser­va­tion is striking.

The Native Amer­i­cans, it turns out, have their own gov­ern­ment and laws, their own tax breaks. They can open casi­nos on their ter­ri­to­ry (which is for­bid­den to do in states oth­er than Las Vegas), enjoy ben­e­fits for admis­sion to high­er edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions and edu­ca­tion for them, as a rule, is free. But with all this, the pover­ty of the shacks on the reser­va­tion is strik­ing. True, my daugh­ter said that not all Native ter­ri­to­ries are so open. Even in this area there are lakes where the pas­sage is car­ried out with pass­es (they say that there are a lot of fish there, and they issue a cer­tain num­ber of pass­es, but there are ter­ri­to­ries where the pas­sage is com­plete­ly closed).

As we approached the ski slope, places with snow began to come across. There was plen­ty of snow on the moun­tain and a sea of peo­ple. Lifts worked, snow-blast­ing machines sup­port­ed the tracks. There were about 25 slopes (green, blue, black) in terms of dif­fi­cul­ty and a “bun­ny slop” (slope for begin­ners), on which begin­ners and chil­dren rode. True, there were such chil­dren who moved out of the most dif­fi­cult tracks bet­ter than adults. The youth almost all go snowboarding.

This ski resort is called Sun Rise. They also give skis and snow­boards for rent, there is a ski school for both chil­dren and adults, there is a café. Almost all the instruc­tors and staff in the café are Native Amer­i­can. On the sec­ond day, they took a ski school to their grand­son, and he stead­fast­ly with­stood it to the end, that is, until 4 pm, although there were chil­dren in his class only from the age of 7. At first they were taught on the plain how to walk, how to climb the hill cor­rect­ly, how to move down. Imme­di­ate­ly taught to ride with­out sticks.

Then there was a snack in a café, and then they took us to the lift to the slop baths, from where they rolled down with­out sticks and again to the lift. Daugh­ter and their friend also took one day of school, but then they were tak­en to a more dif­fi­cult track. The son-in-law did not need school, on the con­trary, he gave me lessons. I rode a lit­tle, got on the “bun­ny” slope.

New Year’s celebration.

On Decem­ber 31, accord­ing to fore­casts, snow was promised, but the morn­ing turned out to be clear and sun­ny, I could not even believe that the weath­er could change. By 16 o’clock the snow had begun to fall, and it con­tin­ued to fall almost all night. I won’t bore you with a descrip­tion of New Year’s prepa­ra­tions, every­thing was as always, roast ducks, Russ­ian sal­ad, etc. I can only say that the own­er of the house in the yard has a spe­cial place for a fire, fire­wood, skew­ers, grates, and we fried bread, bar­be­cue, baked pota­toes there.

As I said, New Year’s in Amer­i­ca is not the biggest hol­i­day. The younger gen­er­a­tion spent the old year with us, and went to sleep. On TV they showed some kind of par­ty like our dis­co-xx years, and then all this par­ty rushed to hug, kiss — it was the New Year 2015. There was no chim­ing clock, con­grat­u­la­tions from the pres­i­dent and the same artists on all chan­nels at the same time. Maybe we were watch­ing the wrong channel.

But we are Russ­ian peo­ple, and like all Amer­i­cans, even on a trip, almost all of us had a com­put­er (includ­ing chil­dren). We turned on the com­put­er and watched this whole New Year’s pro­gram on Russ­ian chan­nels with a delay of 10 hours. We did not cel­e­brate for very long because the next day every­one was going to go skiing.

Cars’ skiing.

The next morn­ing, get­ting up ear­ly by New Year’s stan­dards, we cheer­ful­ly packed up to set off. The roads along which it was nec­es­sary to leave the vil­lage to the high­way were cleaned. Our friends on their huge truck left first and quick­ly dis­ap­peared around the cor­ner. When we left, we felt that the road was very slip­pery, but we con­tin­ued to dri­ve. And then, on one of the turns, our car smooth­ly turned like a feath­er and car­ried to the side of the back side. By some mir­a­cle, her son-in-law kept her 20 cm from a tree that grew on the side of the road and it’s good that the road was a coun­try road and there was no oncom­ing traf­fic. In short, we are stuck, stand­ing and think­ing how to get out. Daugh­ter texts friends “we’re in a ditch” and the phone itself cor­rects “we’re in Cana­da”. Friends think that we express admi­ra­tion for the beau­ty of win­ter, com­par­ing it with Cana­da, and write to us: “And we are return­ing, very slip­pery”.

The first pass­ing car stopped, asked if we had chains to pull us out. We, of course, do not have chains, then they said that they would now go for their chains. A man came out with a shov­el from the house oppo­site which we were stuck. He asked where we are from. When he found out that he was from Rus­sia, he asked: “Is there no snow in Rus­sia?” We answered that there was snow, but did not spec­i­fy that there was no car. Almost every pass­ing car stopped and asked if we need­ed help. Soon peo­ple returned with chains from the first car and pulled us out.
After this inci­dent, we returned back and con­tin­ued to cel­e­brate the new year in the house. Appar­ent­ly, it is not in vain that they say that the New Year is a home holiday.

The return.

On the sec­ond of Jan­u­ary, in the morn­ing, every­one began to gath­er for the return trip. By 11 o’clock we had to leave the house for clean­ing. It was nec­es­sary to eat, col­lect all things, pick up all the remain­ing prod­ucts from the refrig­er­a­tor and those that were pur­chased in local stores. The men were focused and a lit­tle ner­vous after yes­ter­day. But every­thing went well. The turns were strewn with small peb­bles, and when we entered the high­way, it was cleared to con­crete. As we approached Phoenix, the road became dri­er, and there was less and less snow on the mountains.

We arrived well, got from win­ter to sum­mer: green­ery, flow­ers bloomed, although it was clear that it was cold here at night, because some flower beds were cov­ered and the tops of some saguaros were dressed in hats so that the kid­neys would not freeze. We imme­di­ate­ly stopped by a sports store and hand­ed over rent­ed skis and chil­dren’s ski boots.

I fly out on the 18^th, on Sun­day, from Phoenix to Los Ange­les, and arrive home in Ros­tov-on-Don on Jan­u­ary 19, but very late at 23:50, tak­ing into account the trans­fer in Moscow and the time dif­fer­ence. At first, two and a half months seemed like a lot of time, but it flew by very quick­ly.