Weekending

Remember my New Years post Walking into a mindful new year, and me saying I want to go on more adventures and spontaneous road trips? That is just what we did for our long President’s Day weekend.

We went with family and stayed in a cabin in North Carolina mountains, in Banner Elk, near Sugar Mountain. We thought we might take the kids skiing, or if we were lucky enough to have snow, just be lazy at that cabin and watch the snow.

It was only about 2-3 inches of snow. But we got snow!

After much discussion about taking our combined clan of five kids skiing, I decided to call the ski rental department for a local’s perspective on what we should expect. When traveling, locals always know best!

The person I got on the phone confirmed what I suspected – 30 minute wait time for the lifts for only a few minutes down hill skiing time. I think this would be very frustrating skiing with children who can’t make it top of the mountain yet, to spend that much time in line waiting to have a short run back down and have to do it all over again. The ski rental worker I talked to even told me it was so crowded on Saturday that he wouldn’t have recommend bringing children out that day.

We are spoiled by having my brother living in Aspen Colorado. We skipped our annual ski trip out there this year – but we all really missed that and will do our best to make that happen again next winter.

The catch 22 about visiting a small town ski area with a smaller size mountain and slopes, is that when is snows the skiing is good, BUT it brings out BIG crowds. So we didn’t go. Which was fine. Because on Sunday morning we would have had to be dressed and out of the cabin by 7:45 to get the kids there on time for ski school. AND on Sunday morning it was freezing cold with a howling wind chill in the single digets.

By afternoon it warmed up enough to go out for a windy walk and some (rocky) sledding. The wind was still howling, but at least the temperatures were into the 20s by then, at the top of the mountain where our cabin was located.

On the way home we took advantage of not traveling with our dog this time (which is rare) and stoped for a few more adventures. We went into Blowing Rock, which I had remembered being much different from many years ago on my last visit. And then we went through Asheville so we could stop by a few of our favorite spots in that very hip mountain town. Blowing Rock – meh, I’d say skip it. But visiting Asheville is a must- go when you get a chance.

There was an added piece of adventure to this story, which was taking my husband’s SUV on a road trip versus the van. We needed the four wheel drive to get up the very steep mountain where the cabin was located. So all three girls wrode side-by-side in the backseat, with no DVD player, no head phones and not much else to do but look out the window, play charades, and yes – fight like we all did on road trips growing up with our siblings. Next trip they will definitely appreciate traveling in the van!

So that’s what we were up to this weekend. I hope you are having a great one!