Mountain Trip - Day 3

The boys slept great every night in the cabin.  They were up early, as expected, but did a pretty good job hanging out with us in our room until we started hearing other people up downstairs (watching cartoons on Brian's phone helped!).

After eating breakfast and packing lunches, we all headed over to Tweetsie Railroad.  I'd never been hear before but it seems to be a place a lot of people my age visited when they were young.  Here's a little description of the place:

Tweetsie Railroad is a family oriented railroad and Wild West theme park located between Boone and Blowing Rock, North Carolina, United States.  It opened in 1957 and evolved into one of the nation's first theme parks. In addition to a 3-mile (4.8 km) ride aboard an authentic steam locomotive, the park features amusement rides and other attractions geared towards families with children.

We planned the dates of our trip around "Day Out with Thomas" when Thomas the Train would be at Tweetsie.  We bought tickets ahead of time for the 9:30 am ride so we got to the park pretty early.  We had been really lucky with the rain the past couple of days but it ended up being drizzly on Friday morning.  However it was a perfect temperature, we had raincoats, and the rain kept the number of other visitors low so it worked out great for us!

A group kid shoot ... Carter, Fin, Lainey, and Rylan.  (Fin and Lainey are Johnny and Anakah's kids.)

While we waited for our boarding time, we checked out some of the things on Main Street, including the jail.

Here comes Thomas!  Our kids like Thomas enough, but they only have a few Thomas trains and never watch any Thomas shows.  They are a little past the train phase right now - we haven't used our train table for trains in a very long time.  However, they still think Thomas is cool and were excited to see him!

The whistle was a little loud :)

Carter picked the golden car to get on.  Ever since he got a gold participation trophy for soccer in the spring, "golden" (not yellow!) has been his favorite color.

Anakah took a family photo for us (Fin, Johnny, and Lainey were behind us).

The kids enjoyed riding the train.  It did a small loop in the forest surrounded the park (took about 20 minutes with the little Fort Boone show).

I guess this show is usually a little more involved with a train robbery and Indian attack, but since they expected more little kids to be on the train with Thomas being at the park, the show was very tame and silly.

After our ride, we got a quick picture with Thomas before heading up to some rides in the Country Fair area.

We had to stop to watch the next train leaving.

It was neat watching all the steam coming from the engine.

Our first ride was the Turnpike Cruisers.

Carter rode with Brian and Rylan rode with me, though he was not happy about it (he REALLY wanted to ride with Brian).

The adult controlled the pedals and the child got to steer.  Our ride was hilarious!  Rylan was crying huge crocodile tears as he drove us!

We survived and Rylan was very happy to have Brian next to him on the Carousel.

The Planes & Helicopters ride was next.  We put some of our kids together for this one.  Rylan and Lainey are too cute together!  (Lainey is about 9 months younger than Rylan.)

Carter got a plane to himself.

Fin and Henry rode one of the helicopters together.

Rylan was so happy (a big improvement from the cars!).

Carter (otherwise known as Mr. Competitive - sorry kid, you get that from me!) was just concerned that his airplane was the highest (the kids could control going up and down).

Next, the Ferris Wheel!  Rylan had no interest on riding it and Carter chose Brian to go with him.  I don't blame Rylan - that thing was moving!  It was crazy fast!!!

I think Anakah agreed!

Johnny and Fin also rode it.

Carter did fine though and seemed to really like the ride!

We decided to take a break from the rides after that and went to the Tweetsie Palace Saloon where they had a bunch of Thomas toys set up.  The kids also got to get tattoos!

Then we rode the rather nerve-wracking Chair Lift to Miner's Mountain.

It wasn't so bad except Rylan refused to let me touch him.  He started squirming as soon as I tried to put a hand on him to hold him and I was scared he'd fall doing this so I just had to trust him and be ready.  It was a little scary though!

Once we got up the hill we rode a really weird train ride called Mouse Mine Train.

What was odd was this blacklit "mine" with lots of mice we went into and stopped in for a few minutes.

After that we headed over to the Deer Park which is a mini-zoo.  There were deer, emus, llamas, horses, pigs, goats, and turtles.

Then it was time for lunch so we went down to another Thomas area where they had Sir Topham Hatt.

All the other kids were starting to get tired and their parents decided it was time to leave before anyone got too cranky so it was just our family the rest of the afternoon.

We rode some horses ...

And some rides ...

And even got some ice cream.

But when Rylan FELL ASLEEP on chair lift on the way down the mountain, we decided it was time to head out!

We drove around for about 30 minutes on the Blue Ridge Parkway so both boys could get a little nap and then headed back to the cabin.

The cabin came with some cornhole boards which provided some entertainment.

We didn't have much of a driveway to play in, but the house had a decent little backyard and firepit.

This is the view off the small front porch.

The living room had the same view.

Each family took one night to make dinner for everyone, and Friday night was our night.  We made an assortment of Mexican food which worked out really well.  After dinner, we had cupcakes to celebrate Brian's birthday (we didn't get around to having them the day before on his actual birthday).

After a little more playing, the kids were off to bed and we got a little adult conversation time before we all followed!