Labor Day Trip to Colorado

I have enjoyed enormously our last trip to Colorado, and it wasn’t just the breathtaking vistas of rocky mountains, dizzying drops, and majestic mountains 14,000 feet tall.

The red eye flight to Denver was uneventful and the drive to the suburbs took us again past the infamous blue bronco statue with red eyes, a stallion standing high and alone in the middle of a hay pasture. Another statue of two eagles stood deceptively on the side of the interstate, fooling us into thinking that they were real.

Breckenridge

The blue spruce, evergreens, and aspens colored our days with a palette of blues, greens, and white contrasting starkly with the vividly blue sky, sunshine, cold lake waters, and furious rapid waters the size of creeks carving into the mountain or running over rocks and boulders standing in the way.

Lake Dillon is a man-made reservoir that provides fresh water for the city of Denver and is in Summit County, south of I-70 and bordered by the towns of Frisco, Silverthorne, and Dillon. It has 18 moderate trails at an altitude ranging from 9,025 to 13,845 feet above sea level. At the bottom of the 79 ft. deep reservoir, fed by the Blue and Snake Rivers, rests the old town which was flooded after the population was relocated for the third time (1961-1963) and the dam built.

Vail slopes at above 11,000 ft.

We picnicked high above its rim, with breathtaking views of white sailboats floating gently on the deep blue waters. We accidentally crashed a country wedding taking place at a scenic view stop along the trail. The sun was bright, the humidity low, there were no bugs disturbing our lunch, and the trail lead us higher and higher along a dizzying drop with evergreens jutting from the ground here and there. One strange buzzing insect could be heard in the bushes and a lone chipmunk came out briefly to get some sun.

Lake Dillon from above

Rubber duck race in Breckenridge

Not the least entertaining was the rubber duck race in Breckenridge when thousands of competitors paid a fee to float their numbered yellow rubber ducks down the creek in hopes that they would win the coveted $1,500 prize. The rest was sheer fun and excitement among both children and parents who brought them there. My oldest grandson managed to fall in and wet his hiking boots and socks while the other grandson was upset because he did not get to fall in like his brother.

Snow plow in the former Breckenridge train station

The Breckenridge train station celebrated the steam engine that plowed its way through mountains of snow and through transportation history. Civilization could not have existed without the rail and the steam locomotive.

The hues of green and blue mountains were tinged with armies of white barked aspens, digging their roots only 12 inches into the ground but connecting to each other like an army of electrically connected strings of Christmas lights. When one aspen falls, they all do.

The 3 a.m. trip to the ER due to acute mountain sickness (AMS) allowed me to experience the next day the beauty of Vail in a climbing gondola and in the company of family I cherish.

However painful it was to wake up at 2:30 a.m. out of breath and with an excruciating headache and nausea like I’ve never felt before, my eyes were wide open watching the myriad of twinkling stars outside our window, so close and perfect that I felt that I could have extended my hands and touched some of them.

Vail at 11,00 feet

Stops in Frisco, Georgetown, Evergreen, and Idaho Falls, a lovely western-style town from a by-gone era when energy was provided by a water wheel, completed the journey. I even found minerals for my grandson who has a fascination with faceted minerals, rocks, and walking sticks. To him pyrite is not just fool’s gold, but a shiny sample of the magical inner earth hidden under the majestic beauty of rocks, luscious and thick forests of evergreens and aspens, and cold-water creeks and rivers.