Vail, Colorado

For the past week we've enjoyed a change of scenery & lifestyle in a timeshare condo in Vail. Our unit is great...full bedroom with oversize kingsize bed, 2 baths!!, full kitchen, & living area with a gas fireplace, which has been getting early morning and evening use every day. The only negative is that the bus only runs every 2 hr., so timing is everything on our journeys into Vail Village and Lionshead.

We've already decided we'll try for two 1-wk. timeshare trades in Vail next summer. Though we also love Breckenridge, here we've discovered we can pursue golf more reasonably due to the par-3 course in Eagle, 3 mi. away, where we get a lot of good short iron play + putting practice +LOTS of cardio exercise (from green to tee it's all uphill, ala Cardiac Hill at Lake San Cristobal). Then, ha ha, if we get good enough we'll play one of the several regulation courses.

We've had some good times on that little course this week and rebuilt a few butt muscles.

Our drive to Vail was uneventful, with our traditional lunch stop at Jan's Restaurant in Buena Vista. The most remarkable sight was what I estimated as 4000 bales of hay on the ground, or stacked, in the Gunnison R./Tomichi Crk. valley. The valley, from Gunnison, CO to @Sargents, CO (home of the Tomichi Crk. Trading Post), stretches probably 40 mi. and though there must be several ranch owners involved, is one gigantic hayfield.

Brother Don says that due to drought, hay in Texas is precious. Up here, it looks like gold on the ground.

This sight brought back to mind the Powderhorn Valley, also a hay producer; I looked at the map to compare distance and find that the cultivated length in P. Valley is probably 1/2 the length of the one we saw on our drive to Vail.

On our first day here we hit the Farmers Market, a weekly Sunday happening. We walked its length a couple of times, started our eating with homemade tamale "appetizer", then progressed to lunch at the Alpenrose Restaurant. They advertised a $7.95 beer, brat special, and we were expecting just that. What we got was beer, bread & butter, large, tasty brat, German potato salad, red cabbage, and wonderfully flavored kraut (it had a sweet/sour taste, contained pulverized onion & carrot & who knows what else)!

We left the market with supper (a whole roasted chicken & a loaf of artisan wholegrain bread) and breakfast (beautiful Palisades, CO peaches). We actually feasted on chicken & bread for another supper, enjoyed the delicious bread for several more meals, and still have one peach left for tomorrow's breakfast.

We used the Vail golf club a couple of days for badly needed practice and on Wednesday scouted out the par-3 course in Eagle. It's a fun 9-hole course, very short holes, good irons practice as well as putting, but the major challenge is navigating the hills from green to tee--all very much uphill, taxing the muscles and the breathing. The first day I made the bad mistake of renting a pull cart, not a good decision. I learned quickly that pulling the cart up those hills was worse than carrying the few needed clubs. We've played there 3 days and had a good time, despite several lost balls. The "rough" is 2' tall grass & weeds, often surrounding a small stream. But I have to emphasize that we had fun throughout, and played for $10 ea., anytime, as many holes as you want. The limiting factor was (a) running out of balls (b) muscle exhaustion.

In between, we walked Vail Village, found a great place for lunch (Bully Ranch Restaurant), & Lionshead, which has had a major facelift in the past 2 yrs. We also visited the Super Walmart just a few miles west, both had haircuts & pedicures there, and Costco, 30 mi. west, where we shopped for a few favorite items. And McDonalds just down the road from our condo. Ah, civilization!

We've mainly relaxed in the condo in the evenings (2 TV's allow each of us to choose), but yesterday we caught the bus to Lionshead for a free jazz concert. It was a superb venue, in a new area that is an ice rink in winter, with a huge tent and very comfortable chairs. But most of all, it featured the jazz workshop All Stars, 12 extremely talented high school musicians from all over the nation, chosen for a week's workshop under the leadership of professional jazz musicians. These dozen young people dazzled the audience for an hour, individually and as a group. We were totally blown away by the obvious love, dedication and raw talent demonstrated on that stage.

It did our hearts good to see the camaradarie, the enthusiasm and energy flowing amongst the group as in their final number each guy (yes, where were the girls??) did a solo on trumpet, sax, bass or drums, and the 2 pianists frequently traded places on the bench without missing a beat, taking turns and making the keyboard their own private playground.

We topped off the evening with a dinner of meatball sliders & beer at the Blue Moose, a delicious and different meal. Actually they're on the appetizer menu, were highly recommended by the bartender and he was right, they're great!

This entire weekend is the finale of the jazz festival which has been going on throughout August, with a number of free events as well as the ticketed special concerts, but our time here doesn't stretch long enough to catch any of the other events.

Last evening we again used the free bus system to journey to Lionshead where we caught the weekly free gondola ride up to the top of the mt. where the Eagle's Nest facility sits, a familiar spot from our skiing days. We were very concerned about the weather and left the condo with a flexible attitude...if it looked too stormy up there we'd just bag it and have dinner.

When we got to the gondola base it looked OK, so off we went, up, up, up. Though it was cool & breezy enough to not linger outdoors long, we walked around a little and reminisced, and it was worthwhile to see all the new building construction from that vantagepoint, Lionshead has a whole new world of places to spend your dollars, has really been smartened up. What used to be kinda a ski bum's area is now quite upscale...for better or for worse, it's now looking more like Beaver Creek. Right alongside the ski trail and gondola path is a new set of elegant townhomes/condos; coming down, we could see people inside through the huge glass windows that face the slope. Whether they are owners or renters, I am totally envious!

The Montaneros, where several of the Graingers gathered at one time and at that time seemed to be on the outer edges of the Lionshead complex, is now in a perfect location, right in the middle of new shops and hotels.

We ended our evening with dinner at The George by the covered bridge in Vail Village, where they advertised "All entrees $15, including king crab legs & surf/turf." We found nearly all the tables occupied by young men in suits & white shirts, and we assumed these clean-cut, polished guys were a part of the jazz concert, and I said something to that effect to one of the fellows. We were politely informed that they were not musicians and had just arrived in Vail.

As the evening went on we were both more and more curious about these 20 guys, so neatly turned out so healthy looking, so polite & quiet, and universally chowing down on crab legs. I finally overcame my early embarrassment and inquired, turns out they're a HOCKEY team, members of a league which takes them around the country playing in 50 games over the summer. Wow! And no wonder they were so healthy looking and so obviously enjoying the food, yes? They all had the appearance of the type of guy you wish your granddaughters were dating.

Neither of us is crazy about crab legs, so we both opted for a very good meal of pepper steak, a filet with creamy green peppercorns & intense flavor, browned redskin potato chunks & steamed veggies...for $15 ea. Many of the restaurants are running fantastically priced specials during this slack season; our meal is normally $22 on the menu. LeTour, a gourmet French restaurant, had all their menu at half price on Thurs. eve., etc etc. It's a good time to be here, pricewise.

This morning we're packing up to go back to L.C. and the waning days of summer. We'll leave sometime before Oct. 1, date as yet undetermined, depends a lot on the weather. Stay tuned!