A Trip to the Mountains

Alternative Title: How to Lose a Friend in 5 Days (just kidding, our friends are awesome)
Alternative Title: Water Woes

Oooh goodness. The Mountains, they are beautiful. But I'm pretty sure that water has it out for my family.  Over spring break we had our house remediated for mold while enjoying the beautiful Lake Tillery with our friends. And while in the mountains the river ate our only set of car keys. And currently the downstairs hallway has the carpet torn out, a fan blowing on the wall, and most likely a leaky toilet poised to be removed in an hour. I hear water and I have a mini panic attack these day.

But back to our mountain trip. We have some awesome friends who plan awesome vacations. We went to the lake with them, they planned our Disney trip we did together, and the week before the 4th they texted they'd rented a house in the mountains and asked if we'd like to come too. We were trying to be considerate and not totally cramp their vacation style so we said we'd come for the weekend and then head back. Chris had a big meeting Monday morning so it seemed to work.

We arrived Saturday to do some summer tubing at Sugar mountain. It was hot but the kids had fun. And I quickly met my exercise goal. We headed to the house after that it was it was amazing. The views, the set up, it couldn't have been more perfect. The adults and Katherine claimed the upstairs and the kids claimed the downstairs with bunk beds, a foosball table, air hockey, and ping pong. We were ready to move in.

We spent the weekend hiking, eating, and hanging out on porch. At night the lightening bugs would like up the trees and it was just an unreal sight. In all our years of knowing each other I never realized Chris had never been to the mountains. We'd gone to Asheville but that was more of a city getaway then a real mountain getaway. He loved it. I'm pretty sure we will be doing it again.

In the picture below, KC had just fallen in the river and I'm just standing there posing while my friend takes care of her. This seemed to be a theme of the trip as later on in our tubing adventure my friend saved her life when she fell out of her tube (I was ahead and clinging to Katherine for her dear life).

It was cold enough for a blanket in the middle of the day. Chris jokingly took this picture, but each night he was out there with a blanket as well.

Katherine made sure we never missed a sunrise.

By Sunday night we'd convinced Chris to call into his important meeting and we'd planned on leaving Katherine behind for a nap and taking the older kids tubing. Then Monday morning his meeting was cancelled when the meeting leader became sick. So we gathered all the kids and decided to go tubing together. There are no pictures, as we left our phones in the van. But it was a trip we wish we'd never gone on.

The van that drove us up the river to our spot to put in lacked seatbelts, windows, and ran out of gas (luckily it had a second tank, but we sat in the middle of a mountain road while he tried to get it started again). Then he dropped us on the side of road and we had to get the kids and tubes all together. Also when we asked about lifejackets, he'd forgotten them. The river was described as being slow and shallow (and this was true in some parts, but when KC fell in, my friend had to grab her by the hair to keep her from going all the way in). We got everyone in and each adult had a little kid (4 kids 4 and under and 4 adults) but the guide also forgot rope for us to tie together. So we clung to the kids tubes down the river. The guide also gave Katherine a tube, which I found a little puzzling. I could not imagine putting her in a tube by herself without a life jacket and thinking she's going to sit there for 3 hours. Midway we had to cross a low bridge by getting out and that's when we realized the keys were out of Chris' pocket. I probably had a panic attack right there. We went the rest of the way down the river after Chris and our friend took a long walk up the river trying to find the keys. Once all the way down our friends shuttled us back to the house in multiple trips and while waiting we called AAA and the Honda dealership and had things arranged for the van to be towed and a new key to be made. It took a full day to get the van back so our friends shuttled us to Boone for a day and after that we there was only one more day of vacation so we crashed their whole trip.

And they are absolutely amazing friends because they did it all with a smile on their face.

We did get the van back in time to take on a couple more hikes before checking out the next morning.

The last sunset of our trip from Beacon Heights.

We made it home to celebrate the 4th and get some rest, and that weekend the van battery died. And like I said earlier, currently the carpet downstairs is missing, molding is off the wall and there are two huge fans drying the wall. So Lady Luck if you're listening, I'd like things to turn around just a bit.