A few family travel winter highlights

We are of course deep in the heart of spring break season, which will be followed by summer vacations before we know it. I’m looking forward to sharing lots of summer family travel ideas and stories, but first I thought it would be fun to make a photo album of a few of the places we’ve been this winter – especially since I often wrote about these trips not here but on the All Mountain Mamas site as part of my role as an ambassador for Ski Vermont or on the Travel Mindset site as one of their freelancers. If you visit the links in this post you’ll find the full stories of our mountain adventures.

We started our winter ski season during Christmas week in the Mad River Valley, where sadly, conditions kept us from enjoying ourselves at Mad River Glen, our home mountain (they don’t make snow there) on anything but snowshoes. But it was a total pleasure to discover the joys of skiing at the nearby Sugarbush Resort. The boys loved the ski school there and I was thrilled to spend a few hours being guided down the long, blue runs at Mount Ellen by skiing legend John Egan. We also head some great meals, Valley style, at local restaurants like Tevere, The Hyde Away, and the Mad River Barn.

January brought us to Snowshoe in West Virginia, where despite some rain and crummy conditions, we managed to eat some great Southern cooking and have a lot of bouncy fun in their indoor Big Top.

Later that month we braved sub-zero conditions in Stowe, Vermont where we plunged down the face of Mount Mansfield. The bitterness of the cold was definitely offset by the luxurious conditions of our stay at both Stowe Mountain Lodge and Topnotch Resort and Spa. I enjoyed some post-skiing bliss in the spas at both hotels and we all feasted on both local food and great views.

 

The snow started falling in February and really didn’t stop, which meant we were in for some prime conditions when we traveled back to Vermont to Okemo Mountain Resort in the middle of March. We loved exploring a new-to-us mountain. Tommy and Teddy were thrilled with their Nordica Drop Session – a three-hour lesson that had them learning to ski terrain park elements and tearing through Okemo’s many glades. And let’s not forget the tabletop s’mores…

As I look back on all these great family ski trips, in addition to feeling extremely blessed and thankful, I’m also more and more convinced that these type of vacations are one of the best ways to spend time together as family. We really enjoyed visiting a mountain that we have never been to before, because it was a completely new experience. I was discussing this with a friend the other day, who recommended I take a look at this article on 3 of the Worlds most amazing mountains. We have never been to any of them, so they are definitely going on the bucket list! I will make sure we continue to have vacations like this. I loved watching the boys improve their skills – by the end of the season, I could barely keep up with them when we skied in the trees. No matter what the conditions were like, and no matter how cold it was, we always had a great time as I think these pictures demonstrate.

I hope you enjoyed this wintery photo review. I’m hoping to add some more photos to my Instagram stream later today as I hit the slopes at Breckenridge in Colorado, which just received a whopping 15 inches of snow. I’m here to talk families and skiing at the Mountain Travel Symposium, but first I definitely want to get a few runs in. Who says winter is over?