Kim, Dawn and Mason: Vacation to Lake Lure

We just returned today from a week at Lake Lure. It was a great week of good quality family time. It has been awhile since we were all able to spend some quality family time together. We stayed at the Wyndham Resort at Fairfield Mountains which is right on Lake Lure. It was a pretty cool place. There wasn't a lot to do there that was toddler friendly so we spent most of our time at the pool. By the second day, Mason had gotten brave and was "swimming" around in the toddler pool all by himself. He was much better about his face getting wet and was even putting his own face in the water. He would splash on his bottom and even tried floating on his back. Of course, he was like a little turtle once he got on his back, he couldn't get back up so one of us would quickly have to grab him up out of the water. He would laugh and say, "Mason, swimming! Good job!" It was by far the cutest thing in the entire world. I am so glad he loves the water.

Other than playing in the pool or the lake, there wasn't many toddler friendly things to do at the resort so we drove around to some nearby towns and did a little touristy sight seeing. We spent one day in Chimney Rock walking around and looking in the different shops. We did not go to Chimney Rock State Park because we were disappointed to discover the elevator was being renovated. So the only way up to the top was to walk up the 500 steps to get to the overllok from the Chimney. While that might have been fun for Dawn and I if we were by ourselves but the thought of having to walk with Mason or even having to carry him up 500 steps straight up a mountain was not something either of us wanted to do! We took a few pictures and moved on.

We decided to do a little gem mining hoping to find gold, diamonds or anything of value. We found a few good pieces but most importantly Mason had a blast playing in dirt and cold running water in the flumes.

We ate lunch in a little country diner where Mason smiled and flirted with the waitress and talked to everyone around us. He is such a social little guy. After eating lunch and walking around for a couple of hours, we cooled off with some good ice cream and headed back to our resort for an afternoon nap and some more pool time.

The next day we took Mason to the KidSenses Museum which was located in a small town about 30 minutes from our resort. He had a blast. He was able to play in a fire truck, "cook" in a mexican restuarant, "shop" in a grocery store, explore the vegetable garden and enjoy the bubble room. It was awesome watching him go from activity to activity and take it all in. Dawn and I had tons of fun too.

We took a longer road trip the next day to Dupont Forest to see the waterfalls. Dawn and I were looking forward to seeing the 40 plus waterfalls that are scattered throughout the forest. We got there and started out on the first trail. The first waterfall was about a quarter of a mile hike in to the forest.

We gathered our things and started on our walk. Mason then decided that he didn't want to walk and wanted to be carried. I put him on my back and off we went. Well that worked for a little while until we rounded a corner and saw the next leg of the hike was all uphill. Dawn carried him a little ways then we switched and I carried him again. After getting up the hill, you guessed it, it was then down hill and down some winding steps to get to the waterfall.

After seeing one of the falls, we decided to head back to the car to eat lunch thinking maybe Mason was hungry and he would do better after he ate. We got in the car and drove to a small park to have a picnic. Once we finished our picnic, we walked around and discovered a really cool trail that had lots of fun things for us to do. There was a forest ranger's helicopter and dozer that were both open for us to get in and explore. Mason was in heaven. He loved climbing in both.