Our 1/2 day of vacation and short flight to Denver made the hour and a half drive out to Breckenridge much more enjoyable (ie we still had daylight to make it up the mountain).
Picked up our rental car at the airport, stopped in Denver to get our ski rentals for the weekend - found a little family owned place right off I-70 - another stop for groceries, and we were off...
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| Heading to the mountains! (Yes, I took this WHILE driving.) |
One of my BFFs from college and her boyfriend (Angie and Luke) beat us there by a day and already had the place in Breckenridge. Cool little condo with the perfect location: 5 minute walk to the downtown Breck area, and less than that to the chair lift.
We ended up at a very packed Breckenridge Brewery for dinner -- after a nice walk down Main Street. We window shopped all the super cute stores and picked out which ones we were going to check out on the way home. The whole town was still lit up like Christmas!
Ended up waiting about an hour for a table at the brewery, but I don't think anyone minded the extra time to catch up (and drink local beers). *Random side note: As we were standing around the bar, I turned around and was face to face with a guy I went to high school with - and probably hadn't seen since high school. Such a small world sometimes...
I particularly enjoyed my ribs at dinner! Ang and I trying on silly hats at a cute shop on Main
Matt and I got the little pull out couch, and didn't sleep too bad - for it being a couch. As soon as the sun started coming through those blinds, we were up. At 7am. Pretty sure the boys were not pumped about that!
We had breakfast (the groceries we bought in Denver came in really handy), showered - well, some of us showered - and started the long process of layering up for the day on the mountain: long underwear, another pair of thicker long underwear, thick socks, sweats, ski pants, four layers on top, two pairs of gloves, etc, etc. Hey, I hate being cold.
It's such an effort to get ready to ski, but oh so worth it when you actually get ON the mountain!
We lugged our skis and poles up the little hill by the parking lot - which took some skill in ski boots - bought our lift tickets (right there by the lift) for the three days, and set off for some fun! We were on the chair just shortly after 9am.
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| Angie and Luke on the chair in front of us. I dropped my glove right after taking this... |
Thank goodness Angie loves pictures just as much - maybe more than - I do. And Luke is super in to his GoPro cameras, so stopping numerous times to take gloves off for pictures was no issue. We did plenty of that throughout the day...
Top right: Angie Bottom left: Matt
As the day went on, the lines got longer and longer. It was pretty ridiculous at some of them. I mean, waiting on line for 30 minutes to go down a 3 minute run got kind of old! We tried to steer clear of the busier parts of the mountain and find some shorter lines. I'm not sure how well that worked, but it was worth a shot.We took an early break for lunch to try and beat some of the crowd. Ang and Luke had been there the day before and found a great spot with an outdoor patio - and reasonably priced beers - so we grabbed a spot there.
Being the frugal person I am, I made pb&j sandwiches for everyone to stick in their pockets. Ang and I had ours for lunch, along with the giant order of nachoes we all got to share.
We had the perfect view of the crazy skiers practicing jumps in the terrain park. Found out later it was actually the competitors practicing for the X-Games coming up in Aspen the next week!
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| Seriously. Look at those lines... |
After we had our fill of food, beer, and sunshine, we set back off for some more skiing. We took the gondola over to a different sectino of the mountain, but again, more long lines. Good news was we found the EpicMix photographer who took our pictures for us - for free!
Day 1 is always rough. You use weird musces and it's just hard work being out there all day! We made it a few more hours, but eventually decided to call it a day. Lucky for us, there was enough snow to ski directly down the hill and through the parking lot...stopping perfectly in front of our door right around 4pm. Not having to hike back and drag skis when you're already worn out is amazing. (Probably not good on the 'ole skis, but hey, they're rentals...)
Once inside, it took a few minutes to thaw out and re-gain enough energy start moving again. We all agreed we were hungry, and actually decided to go to dinner at 5:45. We felt so old and out of shape! The early dinner turned out to be a really good idea though. We totally beat the rush and didn't have to wait in line at the little Italian place we picked out. And the food was delicious.
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| (Neither Ang nor I had showered yet...) |
And man was it worth it! I don't even remember what all was in mine - bananas and nuts and cool whip for sure - but it was SO good! Found the perfect little spot off the main road and got a little fire all to ourselves to enjoy our warm crepes and hot chocolate!
In order to not freeze to death, we stopped in several shops on the walk home. Partially to warm up, partially to shop. : ) I mean, I had to find a Christmas ornament for this trip! Of course I found the PERFECT one in a little shop. I mean, does it get any more perfect than this??
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| Kind of hard to see, but it has our names on it, and the part hanging down says 'Breckenridge 2013' |
...and were ready for bed at 9:30. No joke. We're officially old.
(Part II - Sunday/Monday - coming soon!)
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