Every year, three of my friends and I pick a new location to go for an extended weekend and we always have a wonderful time. We all met during our early days at IBM (over 20 years ago now), which was the first full-time job that most of us had after college. We all moved in different directions and around the time that we started to have kids, we started visiting each other and soon decided that we should all meet up the next year in NYC. The rest is history, now we travel together every year — even during COVID (we went to Asheville to see the Biltmore the weekend before everything shut down – perfect timing). It is a wonderful time of reconnection and fun. This year, we met up in Denver and drove to Breckenridge to stay in my friend Sara’s vacation home that they’re about to sell — one last time.
Vail
Colorado is one of those places that you could visit a thousand times and never do the same thing. In fact, we all picked Glenwood Springs for our girls’ weekend last year and were happy to return to the mountains this year. It was a bit rainy, but we took advantage of the sunny times.
On the way from Denver, we stopped to get “Colorado Style Pizza” at Beau Jo’s. I failed to take a picture, but visit the link. You’ll see that this pizza has a giant crust around the edge that you’re supposed to eat with honey as your dessert. (Excellent idea!)
Our first full day, we decided to drive to Vail. It was a Sunday morning and they had a huge market and lots of space to wander around between shops and restaurants. Vail is a gorgeous little town and definitely full of money. It had a very Disney-esque feel to it for me, just a perfect mountain town with nothing out of place. I can see why people like Vail.
Breckenridge
Vail is also very expensive. To take the gondola up the mountain, it was $64. So, we went back to Breckenridge, where it’s free to ride the gondola up to the summer village in the mountains. The view from the gondola was awesome. At the last stop, there’s a mountain roller coaster, alpine slide, bounce house, mini-golf, shops, restaurants, and more. All of these are fairly overpriced, but you are in the mountains after all.
I rode the Alpine Slide, which had a little cart that you could brake or accelerate, but didn’t have to steer. It started with a 10-minute ride in the chair lift up to the top of the slide and was actually a lot more fun that I’d expected.
We had lunch at a place called Motherloaded Tavern, which had delicious “notchos” and a suprisingly-long menu just for dogs. People in Colorado really do love their dogs! We also got to hike on the very short Trollstigen trail to visit this guy:
By the end of that hike, it started raining like crazy and continued into the next day. So, we had a lot of time to catch-up, play games, and read. It was perfect.
Denver
On our last day, we drove back to Denver and got afternoon tea at the Brown Palace hotel. I’d had tea there once before and they do a really good job at the classic tea. It is a beautiful location, with plenty of nooks and crannies to sit if you arrive a bit early, like we did.
That was our trip this year. Sorry to any friends in Colorado that I failed to see — too much happening that weekend to see everyone. I’ll have to come back and I very much look forward to it!