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 :)