Mt. Hood inner-tubing

For over a month now, I have been dead set on heading to Mt. Hood to try out their inner-tube hills and rope tow. Normally I wouldn't be so lazy and insistent on having a rope tow, but with a two- and four-year-old, it made a lot more sense. I'm all about making life with small children easier (well...within reason....).

We'd finally settled on going New Year's Eve, and so headed out at 11:30 am this morning--only a half-hour behind schedule, which is miraculous for an outing of this magnitude for us! Chris had had to get up pretty early (for him) to buy chains, get an oil change and find waterproof mittens. I...was left to pack and not forget very important items (mittens? snacks? lots of snack? water bottles? cars? extra changes of everything? etc.)

And, before we left, probably around 10:30, I double-checked the Ski Bowl website--six inches of new snow and currently snowing, no road closures only 5 of 65 ski runs closed--good to go.

Hahahaha...fate, why did you hate us today? It rained, the entire way--which means that the roads were mostly fine (well, if you care for water spraying up from every passing car and standing water, but whatever, standard for where we live this time of year). And it was still raining when we finally found the tube hills.

Ok, no big deal, we're used to rain, it didn't seem to be affecting the snow too much. Then we find out, after  we head in, drop $50 on tickets and parking passes, that oh, the rope tow is broken today! They were generous enough to take $1 off our tickets--was that ok? And there was a $3 coupon for a return trip in January.

SERIOUSLY?!!? I checked your website! $1 off?!?! Grrrrrr.....

But I am too nice. Chris would have pitched a fit, had I permitted, but at that point, I was thinking, no, we've driven ninety minutes, the kids have been so excited for this--we'll just hoof it up and down the hill.

Oh, but wait. The little one? Too little. Only ages three and up allowed on the tube hills. There's a little hill at the foot of the big hill that you can let him slide down. Too bad our website didn't say that either.

Have fun!

So Chris took Danny up (and down) twice. Isaac and I played on the little hill. Then I took Danny up twice (oh my god, I was seeing stars on the second trip up, when I agreed to pull him--so glad I hadn't gone to the gym yesterday), while Chris played with Isaac on the little hill.

At this point, everyone was getting a bit...uh...frustrated? It was raining hard. And cold, of course. So we told the kids about the "kid zone" area, and they got excited to play in it, and Chris and I got excited to chug a beer and go down the hill a couple times alone (wait...I think it was only me that was excited for that).

The kid zone? Retarded. Seriously lame. And here I'd been under the impression that for $9 (or free with our purchased tubing tickets), there would be an adult employee in there supervising, but NO, we needed to stay. Scratch that beer.

So Chris carried Isaac back down the hill. Danny and I tubed down. And went to the car. A grand total of five runs down the hill for Danny.

We had brought the kids' new bear sleds (a present from Santa), so they tried those out quickly, and then came the changing. Oh, the changing. Oh, the wetness.

I am totally being cranky about all this, but both boys loved the tubing they did get to do, and despite the backdraws, we all did manage to enjoy the family time together. And Chris majorly impressed me with his snow driving (while the roads weren't bad, the parking lots were awful, full of huge chunks of ice and tons of snow and water)--we didn't even have to use the chains.

We didn't take many pictures--it was raining too much for me to risk taking the camera to the hill, but here are a few taken under shelter of the trunk :)

 

 

Isaac, crying, while I tried to get his soaking wet shoes and socks off.