By Alyssa Lentz (age 11)

It was the perfect day to have a Monster Slide in town. It was sunny and hot. My friend and I were on our way to Loch Lomond, the anticipation growing as we drew closer to releasing our inner monster.

It was an unusual situation, heading to Loch Lomond without my skis, without the snow, heading to the Monster Slide. I would get to experience the mountain in the summer, all green, instead of what I was used to, winter white.

We pulled up to the parking lot, hopping out of the car, quickly grabbing our tubes and heading towards the registation tent. It was nice to get out of the blistering heat of the car.

I handed the tickets to a lady and she wished us fun and hoped we enjoyed it. We both said thanks and start to lightly jog to the first chair lift. As we started to walk I felt something unfamiliar. I then realized it was the ground, it was dry, I was so used to the snow crunching as I walked to my skis. It just felt weird.

My friend and I talked about how excited we were and how we wanted to go at the same time and race down. When we saw there was nobody in line, we looked at each other and started to run. Glancing over at my friend, she looked ridiculous with her tube bouncing in her arm, it came to me that I probably looked ridiculous too. At least we could be ridiculous together.

I tossed my bag on the ground when we got to the Snoopy chair lift and we ran on together. The ride up was slow, but fun. We saw people jetting down the Monster Slide, hitting the sides and some flipped over as well. We laughed but I knew that would be us in just minutes and there would be people laughing at us too.

We finally got to the line. Soon enough, it came our turn to ride down we jumped on our tubes lying on our belly and the race commenced. The water was refreshing as it splashed in my face after the first bump. Soon, I was flopping around and hitting the side with my face, I could barely hold on.

I was used to skiing down the hill, as fast as I could. My objective was no longer to win the race it was to hold on till the end, which didn’t seem long when you were only ten seconds away from it. I continued to hold the grips tightly and ten seconds felt longer, but I had finally made it to the mini pool at the bottom.

My friend beat me by one second. I didn’t mind. We agreed it was a good game and we walked back down, talking about how fun it was.

Photo by Costal Productions (via Instagram)