Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Vacation Update

Just thought I'd bring you up to date on some vacation happenings.

Sunday - We pretty much stayed close to the condo. We ventured out for groceries, lunch, and the aforementioned Oktoberfeast.

Monday - We drove down to Vail. We took several pictures on our way through Berthoud Pass. It was quite lovely with the evergreens dotted with snow (click pictures for larger images).



As we were traveling I-70, we encountered some longhorn sheep along the highway. No, make that on the highway. These masters of the mountains are obviously unphased by traffic.



Once we arrived in Vail, our first stop was the Betty Ford Alpine Gardens. Although the trees were pretty much devoid of foliage and there was snow on the ground, it was still a fine place for us and our cameras to visit.



After leaving the garden, we went to Vail Village, which is built to mimick an alpine village. Shelly said it reminded her of Epcot center. The only vehicular traffic is delivery vehicles and those going in and out of hotels. Otherwise, the village is strictly pedestrian. It's also almost exclusively high-end. The streets are lined with fur shops, jewelers and ski shops. One quaint little aspect of the village is the streets themselves. Sprinkled about are flagstones with pictograms (or maybe they're ideograms) using pictures for words. For instance, they have one that shows a bed next to a teed-up golf ball with an arrow pointing to the tee. The next picture is of a fort followed by an owl ajacent to a pie next to +N. The final picture was of rows of vegetables being wattered with a watering can. Put them all together and you get "bed-tee" "fort" "owl-pie-n" "garden" or the aforementioned Betty Ford Alpine Garden.

We wandered into a couple of different shops, picked up some postcards and a collector's pin to say "been there, done that" and opted to head back to the condo for dinner rather than trying to find an inexpensive restaurant in Vail (is there such a thing?).

Tuesday - We went down to Colorado Springs. This is about a 2.5 hour drive from Winter Park. Our intention was to go to Pikes Peak and take the Cog Railway to the summit. When we arrived in Colorado Springs, we stopped by a visitor information center and discovered two things. First, you need to make reservations to ride the cog railway. Second, their only run that day was at noon and we missed it by about an hour.

After discussing options with the staff at the visitor center and among ourselves, we decided to have some lunch. Over chicken nuggets and fries, we discussed going to Seven Falls, Cave of the Winds, the Ghost Town Museum (too limited), Miramont Castle, and Royal Gorge Bridge and Park (too far away). In the end, we opted for Garden of the Gods.

Garden of the Gods is an area of natural sandstone rock formations in the foothills around Pikes Peak. Some of these are 300 feet high. I wasn't keen on it at first but it was a breathtaking experience. We saw Kissing Camels and Balanced Rock. We also took the side trail and climed (and climed) for a glimpse at the Siamese Twins. The climb was well worth it just for this picture:



The plan for today was to stick close to the condo because it was supposed to snow overnight. Now, it looks like we'll probably go into Denver and do some shopping because the snow isn't supposed to move in until tonight.

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