Our ski trip was wonderful! Here's how it went:
Friday, Dec 9th:We left Austin at 6am and arrived in Denver around 10:30 after a brief layover in Phoenix. Our flights were uneventful, thankfully. We got an awesome deal on a rental car with our IBM discount and were shortly on our way to Keystone. The trip from Denver to Keystone was beautiful once we got into the mountains. I was really surprised at how flat Denver was, though. On the way to Keytstone we stopped in Dillon to buy some chips, water, and cokes for the room, and of course picked up some Crown Royal. We arrived at our hotel around 1:30 and I requested a room with a view of the slopes and on a high floor so we could get the best experience. Our hotel was in the Mountain House village. There are three main villages at Keystone. Our new room wasn't quite ready so we headed over to the next village, River Run, to pick up our skis. When we returned our room was ready. We had a
wonderful view from our room, which you can see if you check out our photo album.
Because we couldn't ski on Friday, we decided to go soak in the hot tub, which was right next to our room. We met two guys from Hawaii in the hot tub and talked to them for what seemed like hours. After a few hours and a crown and coke in the tub we got ready and headed out for dinner. We went to the Bighorn Steakhouse, which was a recommendation in the Hotel's guide. It was just OK, though the prices were ridiculous. I had lamb and Brian had a steak. Afterwards, we headed to the shops to see if I could pick up some smaller goggles. The ones I had purchased in Austin were too big. We found some pink ones to match my outfit, afterall, looking good on the slopes is as important as how you ski, right? ;-)
After dinner we relaxed in our room and had another drink, and suddenly I felt extremely ill. I seem to have gotten food poisoning because the next few moments can only be described as a quandry as to which end to put over the toilet. A fine way to start the vacation. And it was going so well!
Saturday, December 10th:We awoke to beautiful blue skies and the sun rising over the slopes. We got up and had breakfast at The Goat, which is a popular snowboarder's hang out right next to our hotel. Afterwards we got in our first day of skiing. It felt awkward at first. We did all greens today because we wanted to get our feet under us. After a while it felt as natural as running, it seemed. Though I did have a pretty bad fall early on, which looked like it would have broken my left leg, but it just gave me a bit of a bruise, thankfully.
We ate lunch at Edgewater Cafe in Lakeside Village then decided to take a trip into Dillon to pick up some groceries. There was a fridge in our room and we thought we would pick up breakfast and sandwiches. After we returned from the store we went skiing again. This was our first night to go
Night Skiing.
I really enjoyed night skiing. It might have been because I was getting comfortable on my skis, but it felt peacful. There were less people. In some spots we were the only people on the mountain, it seemed. Depth perception is a bit off in the dark, so the slopes seemed less intimidating somehow. We stopped in at Fritz's Bistro in River Run for a drink and a rest before we continued our night skiing.
After a hard day of skiing we soaked in the hot tub for about 30 minutes and then got ready for dinner. We ran an errand in Dillon (to pick up new gloves for me), and the teller at Target recommended the Old Dillon Inn. We decided to take his recommendation. As we sat down and were served chips and salsa, Brian and I looked at each other and realized that our expectations for mexican food would make this an interesting meal. We ordered a "burritalada", which was best described as completely gross! After we left, Brian got ice cream at Cold Stone and we headed back. Thankfully, no food poisoning.
Sunday, Dec 11th:Today we took our snowboarding lesson. We got up early and traded our skis for snowboards and made our way to the ski school on the "Discovery" hill. Our instructor was named Pete and he seemed really cool. Only one other person was in our class, Kristin, who lived in Hawaii (though had lived in Austin for 6 years prior to moving there 3 years ago). It seemed like a private lesson because it was just us three and Kristin had taken lessons 3 years ago and was just getting a refresher. We all seemed to catch on very quickly and Pete was really pleased. He taught us to get on and off the lift while strapped in to our boards with one foot, go down the hill both heelside, meaning heels facing up the mountain, and toe side, meaning toes facing up the mountain. Part way through our lesson someone else joined us. His name was Sean. He didn't seem to get the hang of it, though, and when we broke for lunch he decided to quit.
We ate lunch with Pete and Kristin at the food court nearby the slope, and Kristin asked if Pete would perhaps take us up to Schoolmarm for the rest of the lesson. He said usually they don't take new boarders up the greens but he thought we had progressed so quickly that he would make an exception. So up we went. The rest of the lesson was awesome, we learned to do S turns, Garlands, and Falling Leaf, and put it all together to get down a slope gracefully. We all fell many times and by the end of the lesson my tail bone was suffering so bad I could barely walk back to our hotel.
When we got back to the hotel I iced my tail bone for a while, then we got ready and headed for dinner. Piasano's in River Run was our choice for the night. Dinner was good, though I don't recommend the Lasagna at that place. Very strange. Brian's dish was awesome, though. He had the pasta aglio e olio. After dinner we went to Kickapoo tavern in River Run. They had some great microbrews. We took the free shuttle back to our hotel and chatted with the bus driver about snowboarding and snowbiking for a while. Afterwards in the hotel room I had to ice my tailbone and my left wrist, which was swolen. Ack!
Monday, Dec 12th:We met up with our new friend, Kristin, and her parents at Starbuck's in Dillon. We had arranged to follow them to Vail. The trip to Vail in our Chevy Aveo was pretty funny. On the up hills I had to floor it and the car would drop down into 2nd gear and rev like crazy, but pretty much not do anything. We arrived at Vail around 9:30 and Kristin, Brian and I made a few trips down the learning hill at the top to get our feet under us on the board.
We all seemed to be doing really well, however, Vail doesn't have many (any) good green trails for snowboarders. Pretty much all of them had a ton of Cat Trails on them, which means you have to take a foot out of the bindings and scoot your board till you get back to a downhill. Somewhere on the way down Brian took a huge spill and landed right on his tail bone. When he fell he screamed in pain and it took him a few seconds to realize that it was HIM screaming. Needless to say that put an end to our day of skiing. Brian wouldn't let me call the medics to come get him down, though, and he struggled down the mountain and ended up in the fetal position when we got to the bottom. So today was his turn to ice his tail bone.
We left Kristin and her family at Vail and made the drive back to the hotel and iced down our aching parts. Later on we headed to Kickapoo Tavern for dinner, and later on Kristin and her sistyer Corey met us there.
We had an awesome time sitting by the fire and chatting. Afterwards, we drove the girl's back to their condo, after briefly getting lost, and made our way back to the hotel.
Tuesday, Dec 13th: Today we switched our snowboards in for skis so that we could rest our broken tailbones, and after a run down Schoolmarm, our favourite green, we explored the other side of the mountain. There are no green trails on the other side of the mountain, but we both felt very comfortable skiing the blue trails, though some of the blue trails seemed equivolent to the Black trails we had seen in Ruidoso. Our final run of the day was NO FUN though. We went down Wild Irishman, with the intention of meeting up with Toads, which was a green trail, because I wanted to do an easy run for my last run, however, Toads was closed for grooming and it turns out that the Wild Irishman was ALL MOGLES! ACK! not just a few on one side of the slope. No, the whole thing, for 2 miles, was MOGLES! I kept falling over and finally got pissed and threw off my skis and walked till it eventually met another trail that was smooth. After that we headed back to our hotel and Brian poured me a stiff Crown and Coke and we went to the hot tub. We met two guys from Nebraska in the hot tub. They were so much fun, and kept refilling our glasses with cheap whisky and coke. We must have stayed in there chatting to them for an hour or so before we decided to go in search of dinner.
For dinner we tried the Summit Seafood Company, which was conveniently located in our hotel. Brian had a steak because he doesn't eat fish, and I had the Crab Stuffed Sole, which was awesome!
Wednesday, Dec 14th:
This morning we traded in our skis and got snowboards for our final day of fun! On our first trip down Schoolmarm, however, Brian took a major tumble and pretty much ended his snowboarding career. At least for this trip. I took Brian back to the hotel and prepared him an ice pack and we ate lunch.
After lunch I headed out to the slopes by myself. My first run up started off on the wrong foot. The gondola stopped twice on the ascent and we were left hanging for several minutes. After about 2 minutes on Shcoolmarm, I took a tumble that ended my snowboarding career, too. While going toe side, meaning I had my back to the downhill, the back edge of my board caught and dumped me over so fast that my head hit the ground with some major force, enough to pop the lens right out of my glasses. As I laid there assessing the damage, I had to check to make sure I still had all my teeth. My head had hit with such force that my teeth made the most awful cracking sound. Fortunately, they were all intact. And thankully, I was wearing a helmet. I dread to think how that might have turned out without it. After about 5 minutes of laying there I opened my eyes and realized I was missing a lens. I spotted it about 10 feet away from me up the hill, but a snowboarder went right over it. I scooted up to where I had seen it and dug around a bit and retrieved it. I sat on the mountain for a good while collecting myself as people whizzed by me. Nobody stopped to ask me if I was ok. I found that disturbing. I took a picture from my landing site.
After that, I gingerly started going again but the pain in my head and tail bone were too much and I decided to call it a day. It took me quite some time and a few more falls to get down the mountain. After that fall, all of my snowboarding confidence had left me.
I returned to the hotel around 2:30 and Brian made me a stiff drink and I iced my tail bone.
At 3 we headed out to Lakeside Village for our Sleigh Ride. A bus took us to Keystone Ranch where a sleigh with two huge Belgian Horses were waiting for us. T
here were probably 10 people on the sleigh ride and it was freezing cold and snowing, but the sleigh was equipped with fleece blankets to keep us warm. The driver was extremely knowledgable about the horses and the sleigh ride took us to a very quaint area of the ranch where we got off the sleigh and had hot cider and pet the horses. The horses were beautiful, though I couldn't help but feel bad for them because it was SO cold. The driver assured me that they were fine with this weather, though.
After the sleigh ride, we headed back to our room to warm up and relax for a while, then headed out for dinner at The Goat. After dinner we headed back to the hotel and watched TV and relaxed our aching bodies.
Thursday, Dec 15th: Today we are returning home. We got up and had a leasurely morning of packing and taking final pictures. We took some shots from the Hottub by our room, and then headed down to the river to take some shots there.
The snow machine on the slope adjacent to us was causing a very strange looking cloud to form. I guess technically Keystone resort was making its own weather.
After we checked out we headed to Dillon where there are factory outlets. We decided to do a little shopping before we left. On the way to the airport it looked like we might run out of gas. It got a little hairy for a while and we had to put the car in neutral and coast down the mountains. We finally came to a gas station just in time!
We had a long layover in Phoenix so we settled in at a bar and had a beer and some dinner before continuing to our final destination. Austin. Home sweet home! Our cats were SO happy to see us. I finally slept. For the first time in a week.
This was an absolutely awesome trip! we got a great deal on the flight, hotel, car, and ski rental. We learned that snowboarding is WAY cooler and more fun than skiing, and we got to spend 7 days together, just the two of us. Sigh. The pefect end to a really great year!
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