Midnight Snow Ride - By Sheryl Gill

Remember the snowstorm we had around New Year's Day? We probably had four or five inches of fun powder. Just a perfect amount for a fabulous ATV adventure in the snow. When the snow covers the ground, even the places you've already gone before are new and exciting.

Todd and I have a friend who lives on a 250 acre farm surrounded by several other farms. He arranged with neighboring landowners to expect our convoy of ATVs to traverse their property sometime late that night.

What a great time it was! There were eight of us altogether. We left the house around 10:00 p.m. and spent two glorious, moonlit hours playing follow-the-leader through rabbit runs, rutted edges of corn fields, unremarkable and sometimes very exciting ditches, and other beautiful areas. By the way, if you accelerate just so, you can send up a rooster tail of snow, and sometimes you can aim it to spray your victim, I mean target. We made a pit stop about halfway through our ride in an open barn to warm up our feet and hands and share frozen cherry mashes. Hot chocolate would have been good, but we didn't think of everything. And those of us with hand warmers on our bikes, were doing just fine, and shared our warm handles with the rest while we stomped our feet.

When we arrived back at the house the soup we'd left simmering on the stove was declared by all to be the best we'd ever tasted! And the moonlit midnight snow ride was proclaimed by all to be "the bomb."