Snow Tubing
Greetings to everyone, and Happy Birthday, Rebecca!
Yes, today Rebecca turns forty-four. We spent a great deal of brain power trying to decide how to mark this momentous event. The pat find a sitter and go to dinner just did not feel fun this year. First, no sitters could be found, confirming the previously mentioned feel.
Secondly, Rebecca wanted to make memories, and we thought it might be nice to have the whole family involved. Remembering the tubing hill in Keystone, an idea began to take shape.
Three things hindered the plans. The first being the gondola ride to the tubing hill: would Xavier be able to board the moving car, or would he freak out.
The tubing hill had a height restriction of 42 inches or taller. Xavier fell short by three inches, and research showed Keystone did not cut any slack on this number.
There was not a lot of snow. Keystone boasted 24 inches, and with the small storm last Friday, now 25 inches.
It was looking doubtful unless we drove much further into the mountains, which no one wanted to do.
Keystone, we remembered, has another area called the Nordic Center. We read up on it. Tubing hill with no height limit, tubes rented by the hour, enough snow to make the trip worth it, and no gondola car to manage. The biggest hindrance was no conveyor belt to get you back up the hill; it was all foot work.
We loaded up the car with winter gear, stopped at Village Inn for breakfast, put in A Bug's Life into the car's DVD player, then headed up I-70.
Traffic was light going up, and not a big crowd on the mountain. In fact, there was no crowd, so the tubes we rented were for all day at the two hour rental rate.
We got to the Nordic Center expecting a crowd. There was none; only three or four other families. Xavier and Mom made the first run, followed by Dad. Xavier huffed his own tube up the hill twice before learning he could jump into one of the tubes Mom or Dad were dragging back up the hill.
Though there was not much snow—exposed grass at the top of the run—there was enough for a lot of fun. Xavier went down on his own more times than not. We even tied the two tubes together a few times and went down the hill in "doubles." Once we even did a family three-on-one tube run.
We spent almost two hours on the hill, for about a dozen or more runs for each of us. After, we found a restaurant for lunch, then headed down the hill back to Denver. Again, no traffic worth mentioning. Xavier was thoroughly tired. Unfortunately, we woke him up too soon (he only had 20 minutes) and it was a bear to get him to sleep tonight!