Beech Mountain Sledding

A couple of weekends ago, we headed to the mountains with our friends/neighbors the Callinans (Kevin, Elizabeth, Katrina, & Aiden) to take the kids sledding. The idea was to head up to Boone on a Sunday so that we could avoid the busy weekend time and hopefully have the sledding hill at Beech Mountain to ourselves on Monday. It worked out pretty well. The bad thing was that it had warmed up so there wasn't a ton of snow and what they did have was mostly man made. The kids didn't seem to mind one bit and the warmer weather (upper 30's-mid 40's) meant we didn't get as cold so we could enjoy the outdoors a little longer. The mud in the parking lot.....was a little sticky. It made putting on snow clothes/boots a bit interesting. I have to laugh at myself for being so concerned about mud when I typically have no reservations about getting a little dirty.

For the most part an adult went down the hill with a kiddo or two, but the kids went on their own a few times. Elizabeth went down the hill with Katrina and with both Katrina and Katherine a few times. I think Katherine and Aiden went down the hill with Elizabeth (the other Mommy). The adults even got to go down a few times by ourselves and that was fun.

Elizabeth quickly fell in love with sledding and going fast. Our once reserved cautious little girl couldn't get back up the slope and on the sled fast enough. That was tough on Sunday when there was a line to wait in at the top of the hill. Don't be surprised to see her name on the US women's luge team one day. On Monday we had the hill to ourselves. Elizabeth & Katrina went down the hill together quite a few times, but Elizabeth was determined to break them through the hay bale/picket fence barrier. It wasn't the softest of landings/stops (that being a nice frozen bale of hay).

One of Elizabeth's last runs was from the big hill and the girl didn't touch the break once. We're going to try skiing next year and I have a suspicion that we may never catch up to her once she gets it down. I don't think that Katherine will be too far behind her. We headed up to the ski resort after sledding on Sunday with hopes that we'd catch the cardboard box races. We missed them by 30 minutes. There were still a few remnants of the boxes though. There was one that was still in great shape and looked like a miniature air plane painted red. Another one that resembled a train, but it was pretty trashed. I'm sure the kids would have loved to see them race. We'll have to try to make it to see them next year along with trying to get the kids started on skiing.

We had a blast with our friends and hope to make another trip up there before the snow season is over. You can check out more of our pictures here.