Trip to Vail

I know, this was some time ago. Remember this?

As promised, here is a trip recap. (Audra, I have included special information just for you.)

The trip got off to a rough start. Casey and I left on Thursday (5 am) because we were excited to get off to the mountains and spend time with Casey's family. We arrived in Denver near lunch time and decided to head to Boulder, meet up with Casey's family and check out the local scene. Boulder is a fun little city and has many unique restaurants and shops to offer. Pearl Street is a must. (Well, that's pretty much all I've seen of Boulder anyways...)

After stopping for lunch, we headed out with Casey's family. We just had to go to a Walmart to get food for the trip. Casey & I simply reminded them that there were other stores than Walmart. You know the history. :) Anyways, in true Boulder fashion, Walmart stores are not aloud within city limits. So we took what seemed like a 2 hour detour to get to a Walmart (in rush hour traffic) and back onto I-70 on our way to Vail. After a long day of driving, this was really the last thing we needed, but we made it.... finally.

Okay, on with the fun stuff....

Oh wait... not quite yet. When we checked into our condo, they gave us our room number and key. We started trekking up to the 3rd floor with all of our gear and found that our key didn't work. I wish I had a picture because it was really a site to see (I think we all tried to carry everything we could just to avoid another trip up the stairs). Turns out, they told us the wrong room.

Right key, wrong room.

And I mean really the wrong room. We had to put our stuff back in our car and drive over to the other side of the resort.

Yeah, rough start.



That night we just sat around the condo hanging out and relaxing. It was good times. And we even saw deer in our backyard. The next day, we wanted to get out and see Vail. We were able to luck out and be there while the Art Festival was going on.

Above: Christian on the shuttle downing his "iced tea" on the way to the art festival.... don't worry it's mommy approved. I've never seen a kid love tea so much!

Christian and I just slipped a dollar bill in the "statue" so he would unfreeze and play us a song. Kind of looks like the bronze tin man... don't you think?

Later that day, we went to Avon, CO and enjoyed their rec center. (The condo's pool was closed so they gave us free passes). They had a lazy river, Olympic size pool and hot tubs. It was so much fun! They had this big slide that everyone took a turn down. Audra- I would recommend this if you can get inexpensive passes. Your kids would love it. In Avon they also have a big lake where they show films for free on Friday nights. I don't know if it will still be going on in October... but check it out.

That evening we took the gondola up to the Vail Ski Resort (Audra- this is free after 4 pm). It was such a nice ride up to the top and once we got off, it was nice and cool. There isn't a lot to do up there, but enjoy the scenery. I also noticed that they had a "fossil dig" outside and some other kid's items.

On Saturday, we went to the Betty Ford Gardens. I had heard it was really cool so we went. I suppose if you are really into plants, it might be an interesting place to go, but most of us were bored after about 5 minutes. But it's free. (Notice: all of what we did was free!)

Audra... you guys will have a blast. It's so refreshing being in the mountains and oh-so enjoyable. It seemed to me that Avon had a lot more to offer than Vail and they are really good about giving you marketing materials on the happenings around town during your stay. Hope you have fun!