Father & Son, Plus One: Ski Trip!

With the pandemic, travel has been a rarity over the past past 12 months, so when Natalie suggested that Finley and I go on a Covid-safe ski trip, I jumped at the chance!  It has been many years since I have had the chance to ski, and this trip was Fin's first try on the slopes.  The title of this post is a little deceiving because although this trip was a father-son outing, our "plus one" (a.k.a. Uncle Donovan) was much more than an "plus one"!  We all had a great time, and plan to make this a
yearly outing, and test out some new slopes over the next couple of years. 

And here is the motley crew in all our Covid-protective gear glory.  Fortunately, a face covering is not all that annoying when you are covering up to ski anyway, and you could pull it down when actually skiing and not near others.  You can see the main chair lift behind us in this picture with some of the names of our favorite runs.  Finley loved "Orchard Run", which was one of the best Intermediate trails.  My favorite was "Hard Core", which I worked up the nerve to go down on my last run (and almost wiped out).  And, Uncle Donovan, who was snowboarding, loved the "trick" runs with jumps that he could go off, like "Appal Jam".   

Here is Uncle and Donovan and Finley upon arrival on our first day.  You can see some of the slopes in the background here.  We went to Appalachian Ski Mountain, which is a smaller resort, and was perfect for us get Finley started out.

We started out on the "bunny" slop with the "magic carpet" (at least that is what I am told it is called by my sister, Tami, who lives in Colorado and is a ski master with our cousin, Gabi ... maybe we will make a trip out to ski in the western powder, rather than the eastern ice, some day).  

Next, it was off to get a quick lesson for Finley.  This video show Finley's final run of the lesson, at which point the instructor said he was ready to move on to the "real" slopes!

Check out Finley's mastery of the "bunny" slope!  You can see at the end that we were still working on adjusting to variables on the slopes (a.k.a other skiers).  Finley's "go-to" under those circumstances was to abort mission with a crash landing!

Finley was a natural (dubbed the "speed demon" by Uncle Donovan) and quickly graduated to the chair lift for some of the more challenging trails.

Next up was one of the more straight-forward intermediate slopes ... no problem.

And here is Uncle Donovan taking a jump on "Appal Jam".  I also tried that jump and had my one crash of the trip on my first attempt, but happy to report that I stuck the landing on my second try.

This was Finley's favorite run.  Not bad for a first time out.  The trail is actually longer than shown in the video, but file size limitations required trimming the video ...

All in all, it was a great trip!  Big thanks to Natalie for allowing us this little trip.  Thank you, baby!  We sure had a great time!!!!  Until next year!  Be sure to smash that subscribe button!

And, while we were away, Natalie relocated to Chapel Hill for the weekend for some extra hands (a.k.a. Mimi and PopPop) with the twins.  Here are some photos from their time in Chapel Thrill!

Two of my besties from High School had babies that I still hadn't met yet!

So with warmer temps and things looking up with COVID I decided to schedule some outdoor visits.

It was so nice and very therapeutic for me!

My good friend Rizzo also moved back to CH and started a job in Durham! I love being able to visit my high school friends! They keep me sane!

The boys never sleep very well at Mimi's house unfortunately, so they passed out on the ride home. It was so nice to be able to see friends and family while the boys were away! Next time I get a turn! LOL!