The Alpine Slide

As I mentioned in my previous post, today we took the boys to the Alpine Slide in Stowe. The area has changed a lot in the past few years, with the addition of a huge, expensive resort/private condos, but the slide itself (and the chairlift ride up) immediately brought me back to when I was a child, visiting it once a summer with my mom (and often one of our Fresh Air children from NYC). The price has certainly changed; I recall paying about $3 per ride and riding about 6 or 7 times on the day we visited. I think by the time I was a teen, it had probably increased to about $7. Today's price...one ride for $21, 3 rides for $42. Luckily, the boys are free riders (since they are under 5). We splurged for 3 rides for each of us adults, realizing one ride would simply not be enough, as each boy wanted to ride with EACH of us down the slide.
I rode first with Aaron, while Donovan rode with Rupert. On the chairlift ride up, Aaron sat as still as a statue, holding on to the bar with both hands, and chatting with me the whole way up about the scenery, which at some points included being able to see riders coming down the slide. At the top, we loaded into our sleds (Aaron and I went in the sled ahead of Rupert and Donovan). Both boys LOVED the ride down, claiming to have gone, "super fast." Just for clarification, my sled went "super fast," Rupert's...not so much. Aaron and I were waiting for Rupert and Donovan for quite some time at the bottom. The second ride, I rode with Donovan; Rupert rode with Aaron. We let Rupert and Aaron go in front of us on the ride down, in hopes that once down they would have time to get off their sled and take a photo of Aaron and me coming down the hill - Nope...we caught up with their sled about 3/4 of the way down. Donovan made it very clear he wanted to ride with Mommy on the final run of our visit. So, he rode up the chairlift for the final time with Daddy, and down the slide with Mommy. This time Rupert went in the opposite slide and kept up a good pace with us, so that our sleds finished at the same time.
The boys are already talking about "next summer when we come back to Alpine Slide." It was a wonderful day...