12-11-10 Saturday (Unmagical Carpeting)

Jim was up at 7, I was up at 7:30 and Mom was up at 8-something.  My Mom isn’t usually up much before 10am.  She says she doesn’t sleep well – she never has.

We’re venturing to Hawksnest Resort for snow tubing.  Jim and I had such a blast last year! 

We were able to leave the house by about 10am.  It’s a 2 hours each way drive.  We were all hungry and stopped at a Wendy’s for their new fries.  Yeah, that’s all we ordered.

The verdict?  Yummy. 

Eventually we stopped at a place to eat.  Or was it?  Jim had to run inside and see if it was a restaurant.  It looked like maybe it was but their sign had no indication of such.

Tasty food.  I added that into our GPS favorites… we’ll be back.  After lunch we stepped out back to the edge of the restaurant for some scenic views.

 

Above: Mom ties to make a snowball but it was too powdery.  This is the first time in 20 years (since living in NY) that she touched/saw real snow.

On the ride to Hawksnest:

We arrived!

 

 

Above: The slopes!

Above/Below: Suit up!

 

Above/Below: Mom and Jim on the Magic Carpet.

OK, so let me tell you what happened.  On the first slope Jim went down and stalled about half way.  What the ?  He had to walk the rest of the slope down.  Next Mom went.  She too stalled.  She tried to go again but ended up falling.  She got up and walked the rest of the way.  The same happened to me.  We later found out it’s because they grade the slopes in between sessions.  It gets better as it’s used.  Well why wouldn’t they want it to be good ALL the time?  I was more angry about that because it turned Mom off to the whole experience.  It wasn’t fun.  She had to walk in the snow which for her was exhausting.  She said she was scared and this wasn’t for her.  I convinced her to give it another shot since there are many other slopes and that one just sucked.

We began our walk to the lodge back to the top. They have conveyor belt people movers here and there to help with the ascent.  They call it the “Magic Carpet”.  While standing on it, Mom fell.  She lost her balance.  She didn’t hurt herself.  Jim helped her up.  The Magic Carpet stalled out.  We stood there.  Others stood there.  Eventually people stepped off it and started walking up.  We did the same.  This REALLY did Mom in.  She was sweating profusely and out of breath.  Once to the top she kind of crashed for a few moments in the snow.  Once she got back up we continued the incline to the lodge where I situated her at the café with water and the removal of the heavy snow clothes.  I returned to Jim to continue tubing.  Eventually Mom came out to one of the balconies and would spot us and wave. 

The Magic Carpet failed several times throughout our session.  They started limited how many people at a time which created a long line to get back up the slope.  We just didn’t have nearly as much fun as our prior visit to Hawksnest.  Oh well.

 

 

Above: Me on the “Magic Carpet”.

Above: Back to the lodge with Mom.

2 hour drive home, we let Dasher out, and went out for dinner.  We went to Sticky Fingers.  I had a rack of ribs with wet Memphis BBQ sauce.  Delish.  Mom had a combo plate with pulled pork, ribs and fried corn.  She enjoyed hers.  Jim had smoked meatloaf and fried corn.  The portion was 2 slices of meatloaf, one was very thin and the other seemed like a normal thickness.  He said the flavor was OK.  We all agreed the portion was definitely lacking.  We didn’t send it back or anything.

To finish off the day we went to Concord Mills mall for a trip to ColdStone.  Yum!