according to anna

Vail Highlights

June 7, 2009 on 3:10 pm | In Uncategorized |

Here are the highlights from our trip with Doug and Kari:

Beaver Lake Trail
Starting in Beaver Creek, we took the 5 mile Beaver Lake Trail up 1500 feet (and then back down). It ran alongside Beaver Creek, which was full of melted snow. Even so, a lot of snow was still covering portions of the trail.
Unfortunately, we didn’t hike the entire trail…but we came pretty close. When it started raining hard and thundering, we decided to head back down, but I think we were within a half mile of the top. By the time we got back down, we were all soaked.

Foxy Lady
While walking around Vail, we found a family of foxes. They were so cute!
They live in some bushes and rocks right next to this walking trail, so we could get really close!

Leadville
One day, we drove 45 minutes into Leadville, Colorado (home of Doc Holliday and Molly Brown).
The drive into town had the best views…check it out.
I love how blue the sky is!

Once we got to town, we took a 2 1/2 hour scenic train ride on Leadville Colorado & Suthern Railroad. At one point, the tracks went all the way to Denver.
Unfortunately, the weather started to turn so the pictures aren’t quite as pretty.

We even learned something. Did you know that at the time of the gold rush, Leadville was the largest city in Colorado? Nope, I bet you didn’t.

Here is a photo of all of us at the one stop along the train ride. What you can’t see is the view of the mountains on the left.

Once the train ride was over, we decided to take the Leadville Driving Tour just outside of town to see some of the historic sites (gost towns, old mines etc.)
I have to say, that the driving tour sucked! But it could have been really cool.
They give you this little map with numbers on it that correspond with a little blurb about each site. That all sounds great, but there were several problems:

1. The map wasn’t accurate. It didn’t always have the actual road names. We all thought we were at a different place on the map.
2. The sites along the tour weren’t marked. Because of this, and because some sites were small and easy to pass up, we couldn’t ever be sure if what we were looking at was number 1 or number 2.
3. The driving tour was on country roads that were washed out and our full size rental car couldn’t make it. We had to turn around and head back.
4. What do you think when you hear the term “Ghost Town”? I don’t know about you, but I think of an actual town. There were no towns on the driving tour, just an occasional mining shack in the midst of wilderness.

Even with all these issues, I was able to snap a few photos…but I can’t for sure tell you what they are!


It sure felt like “The Hills Have Eyes” out there. We all thought some mutant was going to hop out of the woods and kill us.

Betty Ford Alpine Gardens
While in Vail, we checked out the Betty Ford Alpine Gardens.
They had all different kinds of goreous plants and flowers. It was nice to stroll through.

TEVA Mountain Games
On Thursday, the TEVA Mountain Games started in Vail. And Apparentely, everyone in the midwest pronounces TEVA incorrectly. Who knew?

Anyway, as apart of the games, Bear Naked sponsored a trail cleanup on Spraddle Creek Trail. Reading the blurb, it sounded like we will get a free t-shirt and breakfast for helping to clean up the trail. We assumed that this clean up meant picking up trash. We also assumed that it would last no more than a couple hours. We were wrong.
We get there and get our free swag, and then they start handing out the axes, shovels, etc. We quickly realized that this is not cleaning up trash as much as it is trail maintenance. We all grabbed our tools and headed out onto the trail about 8am. About a mile in, we split up into groups. They wanted one group to do some he heavy lifting and create some natural stone steps, and another group to go further on the trail and tackle the trail erosion. I could tell that Matt was excited at the opportunity of the heavy lifting, so I left him (and our backpack) with others.
While he did the heavy lifting, my group dug some shallow mounds and valleys to get the water to move off the trail. I’m not really sure how much further we walked…At least 2 more miles.
Here is one of the views from the trail, looking on East Vail.

I love all these trees. They are everywhere, and so pretty!

When our guide said we would be doing this until 2pm, we were all shocked! I only had one water bottle and absolutely no food with me. Nobody came prepared to eat lunch out there….well, except for the guides…they came prepared. At 11:30, we all watched him eat his lunch as our stomaches rumbled with hunger. Finally at noon, I think they realized that nobody was prepared to stay any further and we all headed back in. I was soo hungry!

In town, we checked out the other TEVA Mountain Game activities. There were a ton of tent vendors giving out free stuff. We checked out the Kayacking competition for a few minutes…they all did flips in the water…it was pretty cool.

Red Rocks
At the end of our trip, we checked out Red Rocks on our way back to Denver.

Chipotle
While in Denver, we had to check out the first Chipotle location ever.

mmmm…it was tasty!

Okay, I think that about sums up our trip…but we have a lot more photos here.