The Sun Always Shines in Crested Butte

I thought I was hopeless at skiing after seeing no improvement whenever I skiied. As it turns out, either the simple magic of being in Crested Butte or a good lesson was all I needed. That's not to say that I'm an expert now, but I definitely saw quite a bit of improvement just in the hour we were in the lesson. Besides our ski lesson, we did a bit of browsing at a couple of shops in town, had lunch at the Last Steep, ate dinner at Ginger Cafe and finished the evening, as is our custom, at the Forest Queen. Here are some photos from our day:

Chris with Christian, our Norwegian ski instructor

Chris showing off his technique

 

Awesome crab cake po' boy I had at the Steep

Ahi tuna tacos Chris had

Pork pot stickers at Ginger Cafe

Beef satay with peanut dipping sauce

Shrimp and vegetable concoction Chris had (I forget what it was called)

Ginger fried rice with shrimp (the best fried rice I have had in my life)

Hangin' at the Forest Queen

Today's our last day in Crested Butte—gotta live it up!

Paradise Found

I've been on some pretty cool vacations in my life. I've been to the UK three times and have taken incredible trips to Maine and Alaska. And of course, there's Key West, which is undoubtedly my favorite place to let my hair down. Those were all fantastic trips, but I have never been anywhere like Crested Butte, where I feel like I truly belong.

The thought of moving away is certainly scary. As I've said before, I've lived pretty much within 75 miles or so of where I grew up my whole life. I don't like the idea of leaving my family and friends, but I just feel so much at peace here. I can't explain it. This is just the life I want.

Sure it's cold here, and there's quite a bit of snow, but yesterday, I found out just how much fun that winter lifestyle can be.

It was stormy when we left the hotel to go get some lunch. (I know this photo is out of focus, but it's the only one I took of the snow.)

We had lunch at a place I have been meaning to try. It's called The Secret Stash. It's a favorite with the locals and is famous for its pizza, although it also has other interesting things on the menu, like alcoholic snow cones.

The atmosphere is kind of quirky, eclectic eastern, the music is soothing and the wait staff is extemely friendly. They have two pages of specialty pizzas, both meat and veggie. I talked Chris into one called New Potato Caboose. He was a bit skeptical about potatoes on a pizza, but I had had them before and convinced him it would be great. It was potato pieces, sauce, cheddar cheese, scallions and sour cream. Delicious!

After lunch, it was still storming, so we went back to the hotel for a bit to take a nap and see if visibility improved. A couple hours later, blue skies had returned, so we headed over to the Nordic Center to rent snowshoes and poles. I thought the trip was going to be a bust when we used up about all our energy putting the snowshoes on, but we recovered. We headed up a road behind the Nordic Center. The views from the ridge were quite spectacular.

We headed up the Green Lake Trail, where more views, quite a bit of climbing and lots of aspens awaited us. (Have I mentioned I love aspens?) I had never used poles before; I don't use them with my snowshoes at home, but I soon found out why we needed them.

We were out for a couple hours. As we headed back down the mountain, the sun was starting to sink and the colors in the sky were beautiful.

We then decided to pay another visit to the Forest Queen, where we met up with Steve, the owner. He asked us to go to dinner with him and took us to a place called Slogar. The food was family-style fried chicken dinner, complete with cottage cheese, tomato chutney, corn, biscuits and mashed potatoes and gravy. There was also an interesting relish tray with carrots, celery, pickled pear slices and (best of all) bread and butter pickles. It also came with ice cream, but we were all too stuffed to eat it.

We finished off the evening at the Forest Queen watching the Alamo Bowl. Interestingly enough, we were sitting at the bar with one MSU grad, one current MSU student and a Texas Tech grad. It was all very civilized, though. The drinks were flowing and Chris and I led the group in several renditions of "On the Banks of the Red Cedar."

The sun is shining again today and we have more adventure on the agenda. Stay tuned.

New Year's Day in Crested Butte

Our New Year's Day in Crested Butte was pretty low key, but very enjoyable. We started out with an early continental breakfast at our hotel.

We spent the rest of the morning hanging out in our hotel room, updating my blog, reading and resting up for the day ahead. We started out taking some photos outside of our hotel.

We wandered around town for a while and had lunch at The Last Steep. I, of course, had the fish tacos, and Chris had the black bean casserole. Good stuff!

Then we headed up the mountain to see what was happening up there. We checked out the views, watched the tubers and skiers and investigated an igloo.

Then we went to The Avalanche for a cocktail at the fire bar. After checking out the ice sculptures in Mountaineer Square, we headed back to town.

We wrapped up the evening with dinner at Donita's Cantina before going back to the hotel for an early night. We still had some sleep to catch up on from the day before.

We got a few inches of snow overnight and it's still snowing. I think we're going to take advantage of it to try out some winter sports.

New Year's Eve in Crested Butte

I thought we were never going to get here. Yesterday's trip included three different flights and  I was fearful we'd have some weather delays. As it turned out, our delays had nothing whatsoever to do with weather.

We started our day at 3:30 a.m. We got to the Lansing airport with no problems and our plane took off only a few minutes behind schedule after a brief deicing procedure. Even so, we ended up in Chicago on time after a short 35-minute flight.

We had a couple hours to kill at O'Hare before our flight to Denver, so we got some breakfast. Our first delay came when our plane was late coming in from Boston. It was only a 15 or 20 minute delay, so it wasn't going to affect us much. The plane arrived and they started boarding, only to stop the boarding process just as our section got in line.

There was apparently a problem with the pilot's window, which they were trying to fix. After a few minutes, they announced we were going to take a different plane and sent us all to a different gate. Our flight would be delayed by an hour. We finally got to board. However, it seemed like it was taking a long time to get started, even after everyone had found their seats. The pilot announced we were still waiting for the bags to be moved to our plane.

Finally, they started giving us the emergency spiel and it looked like departure was imminent. Their speech was interrupted by the pilot breaking in to tell the flight crew that the galley truck had pulled up outside. It seems the catering company was insisting on switching out the kitchen supplies, even though the flight crew told them the plane was fully stocked. What ensued was a delay that left us sitting on the tarmac for a good hour and a half, before they flight crew finally won the battle and we were allowed to take off.

We got to the gate in Denver two minutes after our connecting flight left for Gunnison. The only other flight was six and a half hours later, so we spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in the Denver airport. Luckily, our flight to Gunnison went off without a hitch. We caught our bus to Crested Butte, checked into our hotel, freshened up a bit and headed for the Forest Queen for some festivities.

Somehow, we made it to midnight in a packed bar rocking out to "The Darrells." We made our New Year's champagne toasts, finished our drinks and headed back out into the frosty night for the walk to our hotel. At this point, it was close to 1 a.m. (which is 3 a.m. our time). We had been awake for nearly 24 hours, and I am definitely too old for that. It may not have been the New Year's Eve I was expecting or hoping for, but at least we made it to Crested Butte in time to celebrate it.

Today the sun is shining and it looks to be a beautiful, if frigid, day out there. I guess I'd better go enjoy it.