Weekly Newsletter: December 22nd-28th, 2025

Merry Christmas🎄🎅 and Happy Holidays 🥳 to all!!! This week, we celebrated Christmas 🎄, checked out some local Christmas light displays 💡, and skied with our friends at Snowbird ⛷️.

Check out our new posts and videos 🆕 🎥 📝

Post 9: Adventures and Away Time in Arizona

Keith and Lindsey spent time in Oro Valley following Keith’s completion of the Tour Divide. This was a time of rest and exploring the area before returning to Utah.

Keith and LindseyLindsey Huster

Checking out local Christmas light displays 💡🤩

It definitely hasn't felt like Christmas this year in Utah. Temperatures have been extremely high, around 60°F (15.6°C), which makes it feel more like Spring than Winter. We had been hoping for some valley snowfall to make it a more "wintery scene" before checking out any local Christmas displays. Unfortunately, time has run out so we decided to head out to some local Christmas displays anyway.

Lindsey found a list of local Christmas displays and she picked a handful of displays for us to drive to and enjoy. We saw a nice mix of modern, traditional, and over-the-top Christmas light displays. Most of these displays were new to us. However, we did make it a point to stop by one enormous display that we have seen in years past.

Celebrating Christmas at home 🎄🎁

We had a pretty low-key Christmas this year. We don't usually buy each other gifts. We typically either use the "gift money" to take a trip together or to go out to a fancy dinner. This year though, we decided to stay home and relax rather than going to out.

Lindsey surprised Keith with a few small gifts! 😲 🎁 These gifts included a new set of Yeti Rambler 20oz travel coffee mugs. to replace our aging Topgolf mugs that we received several years ago. Lindsey also bought Keith a nice set of hiking socks and the most amazing Pop-Tarts Christmas tree ornament, to commemorate his 2025 Tour Divide race! 🤣

A "taste" of home... Cincinnati style chili 🍝 😋

For Christmas dinner, Lindsey made something truly delicious... Cincinnati Style Chili!!! Specifically, she made a batch of Gold Star Chili. Lindsey used the Gold Star Chili seasoning packets, some ground beef, and spaghetti noodles to recreate the classic 3-way meal that we both grew up loving!

People back home in Indiana/Ohio probably think we are crazy for considering Gold Star to be a "special" meal since they can get it anytime they want. However, to us, it is something special as it brings back a lot of memories from our time in Indiana.

Skiing at Snowbird after the storms 🌨️ ⛷️

We haven't skied since our weekend away at Snowbird due to lack of snowfall this season. 😔 This video from Alta shows just how bad conditions have been so far this year.

However, things have started to turn around... slightly. Utah received several rounds of small storms over the past week or so. These storms helped to rebuild the snowpack that had been melted by the unseasonably-high temperatures. The storms also brought crazy high winds that resulted in daily closures of the Snowbird tram. So, we decided to wait out the storms until Sunday when it finally cleared out to a beautiful blue-bird day on the mountain.

Skiing conditions were definitely better than our last visit a couple of weeks ago. However, they are still not good. Snowbird has been able to open some additional terrain but that terrain is littered with rocks, roots, and tree stumps which makes it treacherous to ski. We definitely enjoyed the day on the mountain but I don't know if we will plan to ski again until we get another round of storms.

Upcoming posts and videos 👷‍ 👷‍♀️️

Keith is working on posts covering his 2025 Tour Divide experience. Lindsey has finished writing the post series covering her "Epic Summer Road Trip from Canada through the American West" with her mom. Subscribe to our blog so that you don't miss out.

We hope that you are enjoying our newsletters. It's hard to believe that winter is in full swing and the holidays are here. Did you do anything special over the holidays? Let us know in the comments section below.👇 💬