Swooshing Down the Mountain

I hope you all enjoyed the recipes this last week.  I pre-posted them because I didn't know if I would have Internet or not.  It turns out that I did, but I was on vacation and didn't really want to bother with the blog.  Sorry, but sometimes we need a break, right?

And where did I (and my family) go on vaca?

We went skiing in the Colorado Rockies at Keystone ski resort.  Over the last ten years, we would ski once or twice a winter at Keystone.  Pre-kiddo--we used to ski many other places, but now it's just easier to go to the place where you know all the ski runs and their normal skiing conditions.

Living in Tulsa, it takes us about 12 hours just to drive to Denver, add into that an early start of 4:45 AM.  Add another hour or so (depending on the mountain conditions) to drive to Keystone.  Okay, that's 13+ hours cooped up in the car with the hubster and kiddo. 

Let's just say that I'm over the family bonding and would like a little 'alone' time. 

The drive wasn't too hideous.  I took some pictures of the trip. 

A whole lot of nothing in Kansas

Eastern Colorado isn't much better

Yeah, there's a whole lot of nuthin' in Kansas and eastern Colorado. Very flat and very boring.  So I read.  And that will be the next blog topic!



on the left is the gondola, the specks on the right are people.



This is the view out our condo window.  I had to lean over the railing to get the picture of the gondola and the River Run slope, which is a blue slope (an intermediate run). At the end of the day, skiing down River Run is ugly!  It gets soft and mushy, and add crowded with newbies falling left and right and boarders riding down the slopes at 50 mph.



Breckenridge ski resort are the mountains behind us

 This is a picture of my kidlet and me at the top of Elk Run.  It's on the backside of Keystone's mountain.  She's got the helmet to protect her brainpan . . . and I'm too old to care about my decrepit old brain cells. And she isn't quite as tall as she looks in this picture . . . I was standing slightly downhill from her. 

Yeah, that's my story and I'm sticking with it!

The first day skiing we always put her in ski school.  Why?  Because she won't listen to what we tell her about skiing, so we have to pay someone to do it for us. But then the next three days, she skied with us.  She has no problem keeping up, in fact, she smoked us on a few runs. 

I refuse to ski moguls, but I'll ski anything that's been groomed--blue and black slopes. The steeper it is, the more fun it is to me. Here's a pic of Keystone's trail map. Sorry, it's blurry, but I got it from a huge pdf file. Here's the original--big enough to see.

Tuesday night, I rested my sore legs and weary feet while the hubster and kiddo did a bit of night skiing.  Yes, there are lights, but it's challenging since the terrain looks very flat.  Night skiing definitely teaches you to ski by feel. Kinda of like learning to take some jumps on horseback. Only a few green and blue runs are lit, so the choice of runs is limited.

Wednesday AM, there was a fresh couple of inches of snow. We skied until about 2:30 and then rested because that night we all went night skiing
 . . . and I remembered why I didn't like night skiing.

Keystone night skiing trail map

We skied away from the gondola and made a plan of attack.  And while we were talking a young lady skied up to us and asked about the easy way down.  We hated to tell her that she was on it, with 3 miles down to the base.  She had never skied before and her buddies decided that she needed to try night skiing.  I said, "you are either very gutsy or insane." She replied that it was probably a little of both. 

About halfway down Schoolmarm, I took a rest break.  The kidlet was uphill from me and the hubster was below when a lone ski, sans skier, zipped right into the kidlet's leg, bounced into the air and then sped down the hill and over the cliff.  Hubster--nice guy that he is--popped off his skis to get the errant ski, and nearly went waist deep in a drift.  Ski rescued, we waited for the dude to walk down the slope.  We couldn't see him since we were pretty far below the crest of the cliff. He was quite happy that he wouldn't have to pay the rental place for the pair of skies. Once we hit the bottom, I quit for the night while the hubster and kiddo skied another couple of runs. 

My knees and feet just can't do it any longer.  Of course, it had nothing to do with my being overweight and out-of-shape.

Thursday was another fun ski day as we tackled most of the mountain.  They shut down one of the gondolas due to the high wind.  And I will admit that it was miserable skiing down the backside of the mountain, the top layer of snow was blown away leaving an icy layer, so we ventured to the front face after lunch.

And on Friday, we drove home--let me clarify--the hubster drove home.  We hit blowing snow, in the dark since we left at 4:30 AM, from Keystone until Denver, then a dense fog bank (freaky scary!), but after that it was smooth driving the rest of the way home.

The fuzzy beasts missed us, but we had a dog sitter watching Maggie, Mr. Kato Kitty and Rocky the guinea pig, and she took care of them, i.e. no one died!  Yes, that is a worry since Mr. Kato Kitty turned 21 years old yesterday. 

Yeah, I've had him longer than I've known the hubster!

Well, that's enough blathering for now!

Later, Peeps!