The 4th of July is a big deal at home. We love to go to our local parade. The whole town comes out for it. There are pirates in a pirate ship on wheels that blast a cannon, old cars, new cars, ancient school buses, all the town sports teams, bands, clubs, and of course the Red Coats and Patriots! People start setting up chairs days before the parade all down the parade route. Then, after roasting at the parade we head home and we get ready for fireworks at home. Fireworks are legal at our house and the skyline is FULL of them. It sounds a bit like a warzone on the 4th. But, this year we were out of town visiting my sister. At first my kids were really disappointed to miss their town parade, but then we did something new- we went on a fabulous hike.
First, we drove up to the sky resort and took the ski lift up to the top of the mountain. I have only been on 1 lift in my life and I don’t remember it being quite so high… oh wait, there were 12 feet of snow below me! This was scary high and I was freaking out that my 3 year old would fall the whole time. I sat next to her and any time she twitched I told her not to move. That is my sister and Pumpkin Pie and Tiger 2 lift chairs back.
It took about 20 minutes to get up… we had a long way to go.
Even though I had a few moments of panic, the view was amazing.
When we got to the top, there was a little cloud cover and it was windy. All the kids were suddenly cold. There were a couple of sparse sprinkles… that should have told us something but 12 feet away it was dry…
It was time to hike back down. There was a family adventure trail about 2/3 down the 3 mile trail. We got a few hundred yards in and the 3-5yr olds and my brother in law decided to turn back and take the lift down. My sister and I were left with a baby on each of our backs, an almost 7 year old, a 9 year old, and an 11 year old. Off we went. The view was even more amazing.
The sky got bluer and it got hotter… 
Then the sky got greyer as we got to a spot a little bit above where the adventure trail began… 
Nope. Pretty soon we felt a sprinkle, then another, and then another. As soon as we got to the first activity, the sky opened up and POURED. Poor Little One! He did not like that. I pulled up my sleeping hood on the carrier and he was ok, but still not too thrilled. We hid for a moment under some trees but then I realized Pumpkin Pie and Butterfly had run ahead and were not taking shelter in the same trees. I ran down the trail a little further and found them in the next stand of trees huddled to get out of the rain. We decided to forgo the rest of the activities (darn it! there were some fun ones like panning for agates and fool’s gold!) and race down the mountain the rest of the way. The sky was pouring out HUGE drops of rain. By the time we got down, the rain had let up a bit and we were nice and wet but hot from our run down the rest of the mountain. It certainly was an adventure to remember.
We drove home, had dinner, and then it was time for the cherry-pit spitting contest. I think my brother in law won in spite of Tiger’s HUGE windup!
Unfortunately it was a bit too windy to do much with the fireworks we bought. We did get to light some of them with a lot of effort and they were beautiful. We also got to see some amazing ones from neighbors. I don’t think their streets were quite as windy as my sister’s.
All in all it was a wonderful 4th. As much as I love our home traditions, sometimes it is fun to go on an adventure and try something new… and we certainly had an adventure!
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