Ski day at Vail

For probably the first time ever, we arrived "early" at Vail!  We headed into town searching for the free parking spots.  In Vail, you can either shell out $25 to park in the garage for the day, or park at one of the free parking spots scattered throughout the town.  Unfortunately most of the free spots require you to take a shuttle bus to the slopes, which only runs every 30 or 40 minutes.  That makes for quite a lag time from when you get parked if you just miss the bus.  So we found a location within walking distance at a municipal building.  Yahoo, our day is starting out great!
We actually were on the chairlift at 9:05, a feat I'm not sure we've ever accomplished.  There was fresh new snow and the sun was shining.  We headed over to Blue Sky Basin right away.  Along the way we were stopped by a friendly SharpShooter employee who took some fun pictures of us.  Too bad they cost so much money to buy, as some of these pictures were quite cute :)

Our plans for the day included meeting up with my friend Carol who was also on vacation, but staying at Vail. 
We had an early lunch at the "Dawg Haus".  This is a cool place because you get to eat outdoors and the prices are relatively affordable - $7.25 for a footlong chili dog.  It was a huge hot dog and it refueled us for a long day of skiing.
Around 1:30 we met up with Carol and her friends and we skied around the front side of the mountain.  We ended up skiing until 4:00pm, at which time we decided it had been a long enough day of skiing.  My arms and legs were quite tired and sore by that time so it was definitely a good quiting time for me!
When we walked back to our car we were bummed to see that we got a parking ticket!  ughhh.  A $38 parking ticket.  Oh man.  However, we really did feel like that parking spot was a good one, so we will be sending a letter to the town of Vail to fight the ticket.
When we got back to our condo we went to the hot tub again.  For dinner we went to the Kickapoo Tavern and enjoyed a huge plate (only a half order!) of nachos.  They were delicious.  Then back to the condo to fall asleep in front of the TV :)

Skiing Breck

We spent our first day of skiing on our trip at Breckenridge.  I really like Breck because there are many peaks to ski on, all in a row - that makes it seem easily to navigate (or maybe just easier to read the map, because we did end up getting lost a few time!).  Lots of varied terrain.  We even got to venture up a t-bar to the peak of one of the mountains were a windy, freezing bowl awaited us!  In addition to the normal cold windy weather that is usually there, we also got to experience quite a bit of snowfall on occasion.  Seems like one of the peaks would have snow blowing, and the other would be sunny.  We did ski the whole resort and enjoyed most of it.  The most memorial experience of the day though was when I did a face plant.  I was following Alan though some trees and I got my ski tip caught on a little tree.  Then I immediately plowed face first into the snow - very hard.  I checked my teeth right away, and was relived to found out they were all still there.  I did get a fat lip though, and black bruise under my lip.  It also hurt my ribs on one side.  But I survived.  Eventually. :)
For dinner we went to our fav "Downstairs at Eric's" and enjoyed a pitcher of beer, burgers and fries.  uggh, we were pretty stuffed by the time we left.  After we got back to our condo, we enjoyed the warm waters of our hot tub.  It sure felt good!