Thursday, February 07, 2008

Day 5 - Breckenridge, CO

We took our time this morning, enjoying the fire and our coffee. My arm is better today after a jacuzzi tub last night, but I still declined Tom's offer to drive me to Peak 8 for some cross-country skiing. 

Instead, I watched them bundle up and head off to the mountain. I looked into dog sledding, but it was too far to walk, and I was definitely not driving in this weather. We had 3 inches fall yesterday, and the wind is still brutal. Another storm is coming today, and the snow falling now is quite substantial. 

I never drove when I lived in the Midwest, and I'm not about to take a rental car out in this snow now.

I sat by the fire and read until Tom called me from the mountaintop to tell me to meet them for lunch at Beaver Run. Beaver Run is the slope up the hill from our condo instead of down in the village. I bundled up and hiked up the mountain. 

It is so much easier to walk after the snow has fallen. A couple of days ago, I kept slipping and sliding because the ground was icy, but today I was much more sturdy. Unfortunately, hiking up at 10,000 feet altitude is not as easy as hiking down. By the time I reached Beaver Run, I was huffing and puffing and dreading the walk downhill later.


We ate at the Beaver Run restaurant. I had a jumbo baked potato and loaded it with bacon, butter, salsa, olives, and onions, and when the inside was gone, I went to retrieve more butter so that I could eat the skin.  I was feeling somewhat healthy about my choice, despite the butter, and I returned to the table to find my potato gone. Poof. None of the five at the table had noticed someone steal it.

They stared at me with their wind-chapped cheeks and wide, mystified eyes.

Them: "Your potato? We didn't know you were eating one."





They headed back up the slopes, and I wandered around the Beaver Run resort for a while. The hike back to the condo was not so bad after all, except that the snow was blowing in my eyes, making it a tad difficult to see. I hadn't been home long when the rest of the troop joined me. Too cold for the girls.

We decided to eat out at a restaurant in the village that had a coupon in the local paper. Clint has picked the two restaurants we have visited, and we have agreed that he is the King of Restaurant Pickers.

This place, The Briar Rose, was off of the main street, so we bundled up and hiked to it. Darcy whined some about the walk, but it felt good to get out, and the falling snow was beautiful.

The restaurant was a small one with an excellent menu for adults and kids. We shared a bottle of wine and toasted to Clint being King RP as well as our walk through the snow. Tom and I had trout, the boys had beef, the girls chicken. On our walk back home, we stopped off at Clint's Bakery and bought the giant cookies for dessert. We made it home in time for the beginning of Survivor and ended the night with another movie.

Tomorrow's plan is to cross-country ski and to do some tubing. A storm is supposed to dump between 6 inches and 12 inches of snow overnight. We are thankful we aren't leaving tomorrow.

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