Manning Park

I left work early on Friday so we could get to Manning Park before it got too dark. We hit the border and had to wait... for one car in front of us, as of Friday it was the quickest I've ever been through the border. The drive is estimated at about 3 hours and we left about 12:15 and we got to Manning Park and unloaded and in our room by 2:45, this includes our 'wait' at the border.

Since we arrived so early we rented some snow shoes and went to explore a little, Alex had a tough time, but we found a little path someone else had made and we decided to explore. It pretty much went up and up and up. Jacob kept on climbing like crazy while I was behind and helping Alex. Alex did great, the packed trail was pretty deep and was up over Alex's waist. If you stepped off into the fresh powder you just sank in.

After dinner we went to the pool and as we arrived it seemed that most the other families left, so we had pretty much the whole place to ourselves. We swam for a while and once we were leaving it looked like a group of high schoolers (20-30+) were just headed to the pool so we hit it spot on.

We were going to spend all day Saturday up at the ski area, Jacob and I went snowboarding and Alex was going to take a ski lesson while Debbie watched and took pictures. Then lunch up there followed by the afternoon in the tube park. Jacob and I got our lift tickets and made our way to the blue chair.

Alex didn't want to take a ski lesson afterall so Debbie and Alex got tube park tickets. Since the tube park is only open on the weekends, and all this extra snow, they had to dig out the tube cable (it pulls you and tube back up the hill) so they just had to wait and Alex wasn't the best waiter.

Jacob and I made it to the top and started down the easy route. Jacob is still learning balance on the board and had many crashes, so it took a while to get down. He was on the wrong side of the route so we couldn't make it up and over this one little section to get back to the blue chair. So we went down toward the lodge area and possibly over to the orange chair. I don't know what happened, but Jacob took off and didn't crash quickly, so he kept gaining speed and headed straight down. faster and faster, headed straight for a dense bunch of trees. I was getting a bit scared, so I treied to speed up but he was maybe a football field in front when he took a very hard crash, end over end, hard to say, but I think it was about 5 or 6 end overs. I got there as quick as I could, and he was pretty startled, but not hurt, so we sat for a bit and decided to be done snowboarding for the day. They were nice enough to give us our lift ticket money back.

We met up with Debbie and Alex and was pretty clear that they wanted to go. Jacob and I were hoping to go tubing, but it was not clear yet. We missed the shuttle bus by 5 minutes so had an hour to wait, we ate a bit and caught the 11 o'clock shuttle back down the hill to the resort. The tube park was still not open yet.

We decided to head home, so we checked out and didn't have to pay for the second night. rather than leaving immediately we rented some skates and took a try at some hockey. Hard enough just to skate and then carry and control a stick and puck was even harder. But we had fun.

Left at 1:00 pm on the nose, and made great time again, I was a little worried about the border as it is always tougher to get back into the US and the lines longer. Boy o Boy, we almost broke the record we set the day before. only 1 car in front of us and we would of made it through faster than the day before, but they switched agents right in front of us. Still very nice. We also stopped on way home to pick up Sugar at the farm we use for boarding. Incuding the border and picking up Sugar, we made it home quicker than the trip up. Back in our driveway at 3:15!

Good fun, but think we will wait for the kids to get a bit older before we try another 'ski' trip.