When there are lots of kids, they have to have something to do. It is tiring, yes.

One trick most parents can likely agree on: When there are multiple kids, it tends to be easier to parent them. What does that even mean?

It means, kids can entertain themselves; and that’s (almost) exactly what happened this weekend in the mountains with our friends Andy and Laura (and kids). In a perfect world, the other two great families would have been with us as well: The Steinwedells and the Torres’. They were with us in spirit.

Five kids. Though that may sound insane, the kids are all pretty well behaved. We did what any parent would do, and threatened them that there are numerous bears outside eager to meet ill-behaved children. They seemed to respond well to that.

Originally the forecast called for a lot of rain, but it only ended up raining early on Friday.

Kids aren’t just gonna sit around and entertain themselves in an Air BNB, so Taylor found us the MAIN event of the weekend:

Ok, ok- the main event of the weekend was not eating at my favorite, mediocre quality burrito place from college. Yes, it is nostalgic, and yes, it is consistently ranked as a 6 out of 10; but it is a tradition to eat there between one and seven times on a weekend visit.

Taylor did some research and pointed us to the Alpine coaster in banner elk as a fun event.

Did it rain on our parade? Yes. Did we care? nah, it was great.

The carts are more sturdy than I was expecting; there are rules about going with two people on a cart/sled/buggy, and Mercy was on the very bottom range of height/weight/age to ride with someone. Were we afraid that she might be scared? Yes. Did we do it anyways? Again, yes.

There was a calculated risk about whether to film while going down the coaster, and I decided against it. However, here we are on the long haul UP the mountain:

You may be thinking, what did the three year old think about it? Did she have fun? She smiled long enough to get a pic of her, and that is saying a bit. One day she will get older and wonder why we don’t have any good pics of her as a kid, and the answer will be “You always frowned or ran away from a camera.” In the instance, she was buckled in and couldn’t escape her dad’s relentless pursuit of a silly selfie:

The best thing to do with kids while in the mountains? Try the classic dad move: “Let’s go for a hike!”. If you are an avid reader here at theloganfam.com, you may recall our last family hike with friends in the mountains where we got lost for several hours in the woods. This was not that. Everyone needs a story of redemption, and this was mine.

A 2.3 mile hike around the lake. It was about as easy as a hike could be if one wanted to avoid getting lost: keep the body of water on your right, and eventually, you will make it around the loop back to the car.

The kids did great. Honestly, it was a lot of fun. Of course I rushed the kids a bit to ensure that they didn’t get tired in the beginning of the hike, and not have enough energy to finish. I didn’t want to end up carrying anyone on my shoulders.

It was a lot of fun. The Peascoes are great friends, and it is wild to think how we started hanging out with only 2 kids between us.

On the way back from the hike, we sure were thirsty. So we did what any responsible parents would do, and stopped at a brewery for a pint before heading to the cabin for the night. An intense crayon coloring competition ensued:

Do you play games when you go on trips with family? We do; we used to play more games before bedtime routines became exhausting, but now the kids are getting old enough to where we can play games from time to time. So before a few hours of quiet, we went out with a bang by playing apples to apples, jr. Per usual, I lost by a wide margin.

This next part doesn’t apply to the whole group, but I would be remiss if it wasn’t included.

When I was in college, at the top of the mountain was a dangerous, rusty old fire tower on the ridge of the mountain overlooking campus. It also happened to be almost directly behind the house we were staying in. My initial instinct to take the kids on a “small hike to go see the fire tower” would have been wrong: we definitely would have gotten lost.

Back in college, it would take a four wheel drive car to get up there. The view was amazing. And since the three year old was melting down and needed a nap, I thought it was a great opportunity to go find the fire tower near our cabin for the weekend. Surely it would be easy to find on a foggy morning on a rough gravel road, right?

No. It wasn’t.

In fact, driving an AWD Acura MDX up that road was right up there with the not-smart things I have done. There was a point I had to turn around. Here is a clip, and of course, videos never do this kind of thing justice:

I got there. And it was disappointing. Unfortunately a fun, adventurous destination had become another 5G radio tower. The rusty old tower was gone. All the fun things are gone.