The Davis Family: Hitting the Slopes

So, the newscasters were all over the television talking about one of North Carolina's famous ice storms that was hitting our area. The storm thoroughly coated all of the roads with a nice layer of ice leaving it impossible for us to go even a mile down the road Friday evening. The temperatures were way below freezing so nothing was melting that night. So, what did Ian and I decide to do the next morning...why, go on a 4 hour drive to the mountains to go skiing of course.

We knew that the freeway conditions would be okay if we could get to them, so we just plopped the chains we had purchased in Seattle on Ian's tires and hopped in the car. The chains got us safely to the freeway where we could take them off and continue on our way. The drive was fairly uneventful, only a few stops for our little potty training boy. (Even though we put him in diapers for ease of driving, he had to stop to use the potty...he's really learning!)

We arrived at Beech Mountain ski resort about 4 hours after we had left home, and we were ready for an adventure. The first part of the adventure we really hadn't anticipated. Getting out to the slopes was an hour -long adventure that completely wore Ian and I out. We had to lug the boys and gear to the rental place, then get the boys and ourselves' gear rented, then dress the boys, then undress them so they could go potty, then buy lift tickets, then get to the slopes and get skis on. Ian and I had dressed warmly because we thought we would just be standing around on the slopes, but after that workout, we were sweating when we got to the bunny slope. (Oh, did I mention that we managed to forget the boys' coats at home, so we also had to stop by the coat rental room, sigh.)

At that point, we were all in our skis on the slope and Benny decided to have a meltdown. He was done. So, I sent Evan and Ian off to try some skiing while I worked with Ben. We walked up to the top of the bunny slope and just sat and watched everything for a while. We picked up some handfuls of snow and just took it all in. We watched Evan head down the slope a few times with Daddy. First, he went down with Ian's assistance. Then, he did it a few times all by himself! He even managed to get the hang of the towbar lift after one wipe out and took that to the top of the hill a few times.

Ben watched Evan's success and eventually decided that he needed his turn. He said he wanted to go down the hill. So, the first time, I didn't even bother to put on my skis, a just walked him down the hill in my ski boots. He enjoyed that, so we walked back up to the top and tried it again with my skis on. I took him down, holding hands, and guiding his skis with mine. Then, he wanted to do the towbar lift. Oh goody, I thought. There was no way my little 2.5 year old could grab on to that bar and hold on while it jerked him up the mountain, but he was determined to try.

So, just as we got up to the front of the line we got some advice from a ski instructor standing nearby. He told me to try to hold on to the bar myself and Ben could hold on in between my legs. Ok, I decided to give it a try. I grabbed on, and he just grabbed on to me. That was okay, I hung on to him for dear life and we made it up. He had a great time, and of course, we had to ski down and do it again.

Meanwhile, Evan and Ian headed off to ride a chair lift. They had a great time, and as Ben and I were exiting the bunny slope, we meet up with Ian and Evan careening down the green slope with Evan in between Ian's legs. Both of them were thrilled, but the boys were tired and ready to go. We stopped off in the lodge to get some hot chocolate and did the return trip of lugging all of our equipment back and getting to the car.

You might think we were done adventuring, but oh no. We got back in the car and headed down to the free sledding hill in the town center of Beech Mountain (which, by the way, is the highest city in the eastern half of the US). When we got there we had about 45 minutes until they closed, but that was enough time to get some sledding in, so we grabbed our sleds and headed out. The first time we went down, we only saw some really steep hills. I managed to get myself on the sled with Ben and we flung ourselves off of the hill. To try to slow us down a stuck my foot out of the sled and dragged in on the snow which gave us a faceful of snow. Benny really didn't appreciate that.

After our first trip down the mountain, we saw a slightly less steep hill off to the side. We headed that direction and had a ball. Ben loved going down the hill with an adult, and Evan would throw himself down on his own. We were really sad when they called closing time and said we had to go home.

So, we reluctantly hopped back in the car to head home from our winter adventure. Almost before we left the parking lot, Ben had passed out, and Evan was not far behind him. It was a great day, and Evan has been continually discussing going back and trying out snow boarding. Sounds like a great family trip...maybe next year?