The long road to snow

I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but ...


I mentioned in my previous post how the snow at our house was ruining our plans to see snow in the mountains.

Let me explain.

A friend of mine who has a son a year older than Sawyer took her boy snow tubing in the mountains a few winters ago. She knew we weren't likely to get a ton of snow here, so they thought it would be a fun experience for him. She and her husband took turns going down the tubing lanes with their son, and they all had a blast.

I thought this sounded like a grand idea, and I put in on my to-do list for the next winter when Sawyer would be old enough to go. (Kids have to be at least 3 years old at most places.)

Last year, the winter he turned 3, life conspired against us. We were sick off and on throughout the winter, and when we were well, the weather was like 60 degrees. So we never made it.

This year, I was determined to go. But it got a little trickier when I started my new job. I suppose we could've gone on a Saturday or Sunday, but I dreaded going on weekends when I knew it would be A) more crowded and B) more expensive. I was mad that I hadn't gone when I still had weekdays off.

So I decided: This is why we have vacation time. I made plans for a whole weekend. Our friends bought a house outside Boone last spring and have been offering to let us visit. We've tried a couple times, and our plans have just never worked out. So I made arrangements to borrow their house for the weekend. I made arrangements to take Valentine's Day off. I decided we'd drive up Thursday night after work and be able to go tubing on Friday, when the crowds were (hopefully) thinner. If the weather was decent, I thought we might even go back to Grandfather Mountain, since Sawyer loved it so much last summer. Ray, who often can't leave town because of his business and being on-call, was going to come with us.

I had looked forward to this weekend for a month.

Then the forecasts started coming in. Snow possible. Snow likely. 2-4 inches. 6-10 inches. They got worse and worse as the week ahead of Valentine's progressed. I was optimistic until Tuesday. I asked my boss if I could take back my vacation day, and he said I could play it by ear.

But Wednesday morning was clear. Maybe it wouldn't be as bad as they were predicting? Maybe the storm would swing south and not hit us as fiercely? 

Wednesday night, we got 6 inches dumped on us. It snowed a little more on Thursday. I gave up going to the mountains. The roads were bad here. I knew it would be worse in the mountains. It wasn't worth the risk, especially by then, when I knew Ray wouldn't be able to join us.

I sulked a little but decided we'd make the best of our own snow.

Friday, though, everything changed. I went back to work on a delay, and it warmed up a lot. The snow was melting pretty quickly. The roads were getting better. And a friend I never get to see messaged me about going to the Biltmore House. She proposed going the following weekend, but I had other commitments.

"How about this weekend?" I asked. "I'm totally free since I thought I'd be going to the mountains."

She could do it. We made plans for Sunday. And I hatched a new plan for Saturday.

Sawyer and I got up early and drove to Linville. The entire drive on U.S. 421 was beautiful. Blue skies, sunshine, snowy fields to the left and right, but clear roads.

A few miles outside Boone, the winds were howling. It was all I could do to keep the car on the road as we navigated these snow-covered hills. When we hit the town, the skies grew dark with clouds and the snow started falling. I wondered if I should just turn left at the light and head for Hickory rather than risk the weather turning worse and getting stuck in the mountains. But I knew Sawyer would be incredibly disappointed, and I would too.

So we kept driving. It snowed all the way to Linville. My windshield was filthy with salt and sand residue, and now the wipers struggled to clear the snow. The slush froze to the wipers, leaving giant streaks across the glass. I knew we'd probably never make it in time for the noon tubing slot, so we stopped for snacks and some windshiedl washer fluid good to 20 degrees. The car thermometer read 21. I poured it in and kept my fingers crossed that the day would not out disastrous.

By the time we made it Sugar Mountain, the snow had stopped and the clouds were starting to clear. The weather had not kept visitors away as I'd secretly hoped. The place was packed. Cars filled the overflow parking lot at the base of the mountain. We passed skiers and snowboarders hauling their gear on foot up the mountain road as we drove past to survey the scene. The upper parking lot was closed ... the sign read full. The tubing parking lot was jammed with SUVs and still unplowed.

We made a slippery U-turn and headed back down the mountain. Again, I didn't know what to do. I couldn't imagine trying to walk up the hill with a 4-year-old, go tubing for two hours and then trudge back down. We could try to get on one of the shuttles, but the line looked at least 50-people long, and I wasn't even sure we could find a parking space there. We were here and still so far from where we needed to be.  



I have little patience for dealing with crowds and chaos like this, but Sawyer was getting impatient. So I decided we'd take one more drive up the hill. Maybe we'd get lucky.

And we did. An older gentleman was putting his ski gear into his trunk as we pulled up. Score!



We stood in line, freezing, to get tickets before changing into our snow clothes. The 2 o'clock slot sold out quickly. We got suited up in eight layers (it felt like) of stuff, and walked around until it was our time.



They opened up the tubing run at 2, and after listening to the safety rules, we grabbed a tube and jumped on the first lane that was open. Kids have to be 7 to ride alone, so Sawyer had to ride in my lap. That meant I had to somehow stretch my legs far enough over the tube to reach the ground so I could A) push us off and B) make us stop before crashing into the end zone.






I was afraid, with the crowd, that we'd spend much of our time waiting in line, but we kept moving the entire two hours. We'd ride down the hill, jump up and climb across the other lanes and then jump on the "magic carpet" conveyor belt to ride back to the top. I didn't keep count, but I bet we went down at least a dozen times.


The one picture I got of us going down ... before my camera froze and quit working. 

Some of the lanes were better groomed than others, and some had longer lines. We tried a couple, and settled on one that went pretty fast but had a short line. For whatever reason that lane made our tube spin. Think bobsledding plus Tilt-a-Whirl. We'd whoosh down the slope doing doughnuts the whole way, which just made both of us laugh. And dizzy.

After a couple trips, I figured out how to move my body to make us spin faster or slower, and Sawyer stood up a few times and then fell right back over ... like he was drunk. That made us laugh even harder.



The main safety rule they stressed was not to walk down the lanes. If your tube didn't make it to the bottom, they said, get up, check for other people and then cut across the lanes. But some people didn't listen or didn't understand. One time down the hill, we were coming up quickly on a mother and daughter at the bottom of the lane. I tried to slow us down and yelled at them to move, but they just stood there. So we just plowed right into them. Bowled them over like bowling pins. They landed on top of us, and after we all stood up and dusted ourselves off, I turned to see them ... walking back down the lane. I restrained myself from saying, "Hey morons!" but I did yell at them not to walk down the lane.

Near the end of our time, I asked Sawyer if he wanted to try a different lane and he chose the next-to-last chute. Naturally, it had the longest line. Luckily, a few people in line were waiting on other family members, so we moved up quickly. As we whizzed down the lane, I understood why the line was so long. This was clearly the best lane of the day. No more doughnuts. Just lightning-fast all the way to the bottom.

We had enough time for one more run on that lane, and we landed so close to the exit zone that it was like curbside service. It was a great end run.

We were thoroughly frozen. I learned later that the day's high was about 25 degrees with winds up to 30 mph. Sawyer played in the snow drifts beside the parking lot for a few minutes, and then we hiked back to the car. I had planned to change clothes, but it was so crowded and crazy that we skipped it.

Back in town, we stopped for another snack and bathroom break, and then we hit the road for Hickory. Sawyer slept the whole way.

We had such a blast. It was a lot of work and a lot of stress (for me) before getting to the fun part. But that's life, right? Maybe it wouldn't be as fun or as special if it wasn't hard.