Do You Yawgoo?

Remember how excited you’d get as a kid when it snowed this much? It meant no school, carving snow forts in snow banks left behind by plows and a cup of cocoa to top it all off. As adults we tend to focus more on poor road conditions, shoveling the driveway and figuring out where to park.
I was talking with some of my co-workers at lunch today about Yawgoo Valley Ski and Sports Park. My brother and I grew up in Exeter and Yawgoo was just a stone’s throw from our house. Our parents used to treat us to season passes, which was incentive for us to do our homework right when we got off the bus in hopes that we would be able to spend a couple hours skiing that night after dinner. My mom worked third shift at a hospital, and we’d occasionally be able to coax her into taking us over on a snow day after she squeezed in a few hours of shut eye.
Yawgoo gets picked on more than it should. Granted, it’s not as big as the ski resorts you’ll find up north, but it’s a great place for families to have fun together and for kids to learn to ski or snowboard. Wouldn’t you rather have your kids at Yawgoo on a day like this than sitting in front of the television playing video games? I must confess that I’ve never made it to their tubing park (I was “too grown up” for tubing when they made that addition). Of course, now that I have a four-year-old, rarely do I come across an activity for which I am “too grown up.” Barbies? You bet I’m game. Building a snowman? Sounds awesome. Sledding? Let’s go.
No, Yawgoo doesn’t have eight chair lifts, a dozen black diamond trails and thirty-plus intermediate slopes. Does that mean you can’t have a good time there and forget about all the hassles that we adults associate with snow? No way. Go ahead, check them out.