HEAD FOR THE BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAINS
My husband, Bob, has long lobbied for a family ski vacation. My traditional response has been to gently point out the challenge of taking such a trip with our four children: 12-year-old Ian, 11-year-old Devin, five-year-old Brad and three-year-old Holly. And then there's the part about how I haven't skied in 20 years.Last winter, however, I finally gave in--with the caveat that we go to a place where I'd have alternatives to skiing, so I wouldn't get stuck in a condo playing Candy Land with my littlest kids if they didn't care for the slopes.
We found such a place in Boone, North Carolina, a small town snuggled comfortably in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Named after the explorer Daniel Boone, the town of 13,000 offers plenty of affordable, recreational options for families, from hot-tubbing to hiking. Although families outside the region don't often think of North Carolina as a snowy playground, the area gets about 60 inches of white stuff annually and boasts four ski areas within a half hour's drive of Boone. In fact, Ski Beech is the highest ski area on the East Coast. To cap off Boone's appeal, families enjoy more personalized attention, fewer crowds and lower prices than they typically encounter at major ski meccas.
Yes, Boone is a gem, but a hidden one: It's an hour and a half drive from any major interstate or the nearest major airport, located in Charlotte. But for our family, the long, scenic drive made us feel like pioneers. As we drove through the mountains, eagerly anticipating all the fun we'd have on our week-long vacation, our car windows filled with Appalachian snapshots: tiny white churches, weathered cottages and rolling mountains the soft blue and gray of a patchwork quilt. Our usually bored backseat riders were charmed.
My family's first stop in Boone was the High Country Inn, a homey motel with 120 rooms, an indoor pool and a brand-new off-site log cabin. The cabin, where we stayed, had three bedrooms, a sparkling kitchen and a roomy outdoor hot tub. That night, we enjoyed a relaxing starlight soak.
The next morning, the kids were ready to hit the slopes, and we headed for the biggest ski area. My husband, our designated mountain driver, negotiated the winding ride up to the town of Elk Mountain, while the rest of us enjoyed the views. At Ski Beech, we quickly discovered the advantage of vacationing in a lesser-known locale. In less than an hour, we'd efficiently settled Holly into the on-site child-care center, rented equipment for ourselves, enrolled Brad in Ski-Wee School, arranged for private snowboarding lessons for our preteens and climbed onto the chair lift for our first of many great runs.
For the next six days, we enjoyed skiing, tubing and exploring tourist attractions. On one unseasonably warm day, we checked out Grandfather Mountain. As we drove down the road toward the peak, we were delighted to see it does closely resemble a beetle-browed old man. We then trekked up the first part of the 2.7-mile Profile Hiking Trail, which starts at the base of the mountain and gets increasingly rugged (too rugged for our smallest kids).
Eager to reach the summit, site of the Mile High Swinging Bridge, we headed back to our minivan and began the daring drive: Picture a packed minivan making its way up a steep grade, higher than you believe you could possibly go. At one point, I covered my eyes, to a chorus of "Oh, Mom!"
At the peak, we saw the 228-foot-long metal footbridge, which sways over a 200-foot-deep ravine. The wind was so strong the day we visited that the bridge was closed to pedestrians.
There's so much to do in Boone that the list of things we didn't get to is almost as long as the list of things we did. But that's okay. Our children extracted a promise that someday, sooner rather than later, we'd come back.
Please keep in mind that phone numbers, addresses, and prices are subject to change. Updated August 2005.
