Snow Tubing in Turkey

Ever since December, I have wanted to go snow tubing. The Outdoor Rec. Center here offers a day trip just about every weekend. In December, a whole group of us had planned to go, but plans fell through.  FINALLY, I got to go yesterday.  It was just going to be my friend,K, and I because no one else would go....J-Twice and his buddies were going to play paintball. Then, one of them heard I was going tubing and he decided he'd rather do that instead. In the end, it was K, J-Twice, his friend, and I.  This place was only 1.5 hours away, so it wasn't a bad trip. We got there....and were totally disappointed. For this is what the ground looked like:

Can you believe this!?!?! How were we supposed to snow tube in THIS amount of snow? Apparently the area did not get a whole lot of snow the past week! So, we grabbed a tube, we "hiked" our way up the hill, we looked around...and we sat there. Well, we didn't really sit there...we made snow balls and threw them at each other.  I was trying to be like Buddy The Elf, and stocking up on my snowballs. HA.HA. 

There were rocks everywhere...so we weren't too sure where exactly we were supposed to tube down. We all wondered how exactly we were going to do this and not hurt ourselves...and most importantly..did we really want to walk ALL the way back up the hill after we got down?!!

Finally, J-Twice's friend was a punk and pushed me down the hill. Which meant I pushed the lady and her tube that were in front of me. We went forward, we went backwards, we twisted and we turned, we dodged rocks and shrubs. We laughed the whole way down...and then the rest of the group followed. Except for K, her tube was deflating.

My toes were ice cold because my rain boots weren't doing too good of a job keeping them warm, my gloves were soaking wet from making snow balls, and we were getting hungry! I added another pair of socks to my cold toes, I switched gloves, and K and I decided to make it lunch time.

The Outdoor Rec. Center provided hot dogs and Coke, which the boys ate(I had one too), and K and I packed our PB&J, and other goodies.  After lunch was over and we were heated up by the sunshine, the boys were ready to go. Here, you can see them talking to the bus driver asking him if it were possible for us to leave sooner than scheduled. LOL. PUNKS!!! Unfortunately for them, the rest of the group was not ready to leave.  They still wanted to go down the hill a few more times. 

K had not been down the hill yet, so we had to do that at least once so she got her money's worth.  K and I headed up the hill after the rest of the group that wanted to continue on.  They had come up with the idea of making a train of tubes...it was hilarious. We had such a blast! I thought it was much better than going down on our own.  In this case, you were less likely to go tubing right into the rocks. Only, we hit a bump and you had to be sure to hold on to the person's feet behind you (which I almost let go! Not my fault his legs were short!!ha ha)  We did this about four times...and would have continued to do it many more times...except the hike back up the small hill was breath taking!! And not to mention, leave it to me, walking on ice is NOT  a good idea...because you are likely to fall and bruise your toosh and knee! :)

Anyhow, by this time in the day, lots of Turkish people were arriving.  They didn't have gloves, barely had heavy coats on, and were in their regular, everyday clothes. One guy went down the hill and was stopping himself with his bare hands..umm...COLD!!! They were using our tubes also, and quickly figured out that tube trains were lots of fun too.  The hill was nice and slick by the time all of us were done.

So, while there may not have been much snow and the hill wasn't as great as we wanted it to be, we still made the most of it and had a great time.  There was no hot cocoa or roasting marshmellows, but we had our lukewarm Coke and bags of fruit and chips! ha ha We can now say we went tubing in the mountains of Turkey.  (I even heard the ski slopes weren't that great around here, but it's all in what you make of it in my opinion.)

I certainly have not missed all the snow and ice all of you friends and family are receiving in the States, but it was nice to have one day to play in it, and not have to deal with it daily! It's pretty to look at, for a day! :)

Until next time!