On Top of Ski Hill

If you walk out the front door of our house and keep walking you will end up walking up ski hill.

On the top of ski hill you will find all kinds of winter recreation - down hill skiing, a tubing hill, and cross country paths.  Since there is no snow there now, you can hike all over the trails and you will even find a stage used by the Leavenworth Summer Theatre group.

I am trying to work out our Fridays so that we can spend the afternoons hiking and exploring our area.  I have been wanting to hike up here for quite sometime and today was the day to do it.

Ski Hill is not your typical down hill ski resort.  In fact, the main purpose of the hill was for ski jumping.  At one time in its history, this hill was used to train Olympic jumpers.  Now it is used mostly as a bunny slope for the area kids.  They don't use ski lifts like the one the boys are sitting on.  Instead, they have a pulley system where you grap on to a rope that pulls you up the hill.

The paths on the hill were alot of fun to hike on.  They are quite wide and you get a nice view of the valley.

While walking along the path, we discovered that they had workout stations set up at various intervals.

 Pull up bars

 Step Ups

 Sit Ups

 Parallel Bars

 Well, this exercise wasn't on the suggestion board, but it works.

 Balance beam/log.

 Ok, the boys weren't to keen on doing the pull ups but they sure had fun swinging on them.

After passing all the stations we continued to follow the path

and eventually ended up at the site of the stage for the Leavenworth Summer Theatre.

 Every summer the Leavenworth Summer Theatre troupe performs the Sound of Music here on this stage. 

 Look at this natural backdrop.  You couldn't paint anything better.

Can't you hear Julie Andrews singing..."The hills are alive, with the sound of music...."

The kids have asked if we can go back to ski hill to hike some more.  I definitely plan on making these activities part of our Friday routine.  There were some more trails to follow but we decided to leave them for the next visit.