Seanna (n. shaw-nuh)

Another thing to check off my list: Snowmobiling in a Cloud

I didn't really have that on my list of things to do before I croak, and if I had to do it again I probably would have skipped it, but we can all say we did it and survived.  Yesterday was snowmobiling day, so we set off early in the morning to this place 

As you can see, they have lots of snowmobiles. 

After you sign a form saying you will be responsible for $28,000 worth of 2009 snowmobiles if you wreck them all, and another one saying if you die you won't sue them, and another one saying that you understand you're taking your very lives in your hands, and another one saying you get that snowmobiling is kind of a reckless and dangerous thing to be doing, they send you back to the dressing area, and you put on a snowsuit over your clothes. Then they give you boots and you get to pick out a helmet.  All the while, a so-ugly-he's-cute bulldog looking thing wanders about and sniffs your legs.  Apparently he is waiting for the popcorn part of the program, which comes at the end.

There's B, getting ready to take a few practice loops around the field.  See that gate in the distance, off to her right?  That's the beginning of the trails.

This happened in about the first 10 minutes.  Ooops.  The big boy flipped his sled--took a curve too fast.

How many people does it take to dig out a flipped over sled?  Everybody (except P, who took this photo).  It was actually kind of fun, believe it or not.  And it happened once more, when the other BOY plowed into a snowbank and got stuck.  They make the snowmobiles with handles to help pull them out of these sorts of situations.

P& I brought up the rear.  We had two double sleds and two singles (the boys were on the singles).  Fortunately, P had the presence of mind to get out her camera for this excursion.  The views were breathtaking.

 

So, they gave us a trail map and since we were first-time snowmobilers, told us to stay at F or G and no higher on the trail map.  What do we decide to do?  Apparently we went to M or so. I had no idea what was going on really, since I was just a follower. Up and up we climbed.  It was gorgeous.  P was driving our sled, so I had time to really enjoy the views.

Until.

Until there were no more views.  There was just an otherworldly, eerie whiteness.  Whiteness and mist, and close to zero visibility.  It felt like we were in a big field, but who really knows because we could see practically nothing.  Lots of funky mist swirling around.  I have never in my life experienced anything like it, and it was very sudden.  One minute it was fine; the next, we were on another planet.  All we could see were orange poles with reflectors on them.  That's how we stayed on the trail.  Sometimes we couldn't even see the next pole for a little while, and that was fairly terrifying.  Then there was a series of giant hills we had to sled down.  Oh my.  P said, "That's the scariest thing I have ever done in my life."  About halfway through, we switched and I took back over.  She did great, though.  After about five or ten minutes, it was over.  Jonathon later figured out that we had actually been IN a cloud.  We could look back at the mountains and see that most of them were enveloped in low clouds.  That explained it.  The children described it as being in one of the scenes from Zelda (the video game).  I just know that it felt like we were not on Planet Earth any longer.  Whiteness and the weirdest mist I've ever been in.  Very cold.  Very, very cold. 

After we made it down a little, we were just cold and all in need of a restroom.  It took about another hour to make it back to base camp.  I initially wanted to rent for a full day, but a half-day worked out just great.  A full day and we would have been icicles!

We finished up around noon and made our way back to the townhouse.  We dropped the children off so they could have lunch, and then my fabulous husband, Tracie and I went to Hot Sulphur Springs for facials (Tracie and I) and a massage (my husband).  That was an interesting experience.  We made it back after a few hours and I crashed for the rest of the night, having acquired E's cold.  It was a nice, quiet night for everyone. We all needed the rest.

I think the children are going to go ski for a few hours today, and the grownups are going to do a bit of shopping up in Grand Lake.  Then it's time to get ready to go home (tomorrow).

We made it to Lake Granby & Skiing

We are all various shades of sore and tired.  Well, most of us.  My sister-in-law had a massage and some kind of soak at the Hot Sulphur Springs Spa while the children and I skied.  We signed up for lessons and had an absolute blast.  My goal was to make it down a bunny hill at least once by the end of the day.  Shoot, we were doing that by the end of the first HOUR.  It was fantastic.  I absolutely loved it. We had a great instructor, Uwe (pronounced Oooh-Vay), who was from Germany and had been skiing for 40 years.  I only fell 100 times.  No, just kidding.  I fell three times, two on the lift.  One was a total wipeout.  I sort of enjoyed it, although it was a tad bit humiliating.  I have photos but they are not on this camera card.  The children seemed to have a great time.  I think we found our sport.  Fabulous.  Wish I could do it more often. 

Before we left The Stanley yesterday, we took the Ghost Tour.  It was terrific--I think everyone enjoyed even the historical stuff.  Here's our tour guide explaining how the Stanley Steamer worked (hint:  It used steam and blew up if you went more than 20 miles):

She took us into the music room, where there was a really cool old grand piano.  Apparently John Philip Sousa stayed at the Stanley every year back in the day, and every year he would tune it for Flora Stanley, wife of F.O. Stanley, who built the hotel.  He would sign the inside every time he tuned it, but some big dope sanded all of the signatures down in the 70s, so that cool piece of history is gone forever.

We also got to go into the room that Ghost Hunters felt was the most haunted in the hotel.  I don't really watch that show, so I don't have a good frame of reference, but apparently a lot of haunted stuff happened in that room when they filmed there?

 

This is in the BASEMENT of The Stanley.  In the basement of a hotel.  What is that about?  There is a whole tunnel made out of this stuff.  It was weird and creepy.  I couldn't wait to get out of there.

After the Ghost Tour, it was time to move on to our next adventure, which takes place in Lake Granby.  Absolutely spectacular drive.  We accidentally wound up in Golden, Colorado at one point.  Weirdness.  Lots of storefront casinos.  It took 5 hours to go about 150 miles.  The sad part is that it's about a 60 mile drive from Estes Park to Granby when the weather is good.  Unfortunately, the National Park Service closes the road that goes over the mountains in about October, so we had to go all the way down and around in order to get to our destination.  It was breathtakingly beautiful, but I was kind of in a snit so I didn't get any photos.  I will try to on the way back down. 

I do have photos of where we're staying now:

We drove up to Grand Lake last night and had dinner at this really cute bar and grill.  It was excellent. 

Took these on the way back from skiing:

Lots of the fences are like that around here.  It's really pretty.

And that brings us to now.  Tracie made a great spaghetti dinner and we are all pretty worn out.  We have another adventure tomorrow, so I think we are going to button it up and relax this evening.  It's sure cozy with the fire going!

Happy Boxing Day!

This is what it looks like outside our windows this morning:

It is so incredibly beautiful.

We are off to a ghost tour this morning, and then we are making the trek to Granby, where the real snow is.  I may or may not have internet access, so this may be the last time I post until we get back on Tuesday.  In case I am not able to post again, here's the next place we're staying:  Our next destination.  Tomorrow we go skiing and then there's a day of tubing and snowmobiling in there somewhere.  Probably.  Something like that!  Hopefully I'll be back soon but if not, have a great weekend!

It was a Shining Theme...

We watched The Shining downstairs last night...

Hey!  That looks familiar.  Weren't we just there earlier today?  Is that the place about 500 feet down the lane?

 

Nice foot action  to the left.  That one is always aware of the camera clicking away, I tell ya.

Yes, I did wake up at 2:00 a.m. Well, I woke up when my nephew woke me up.  Yes, we walked down to the hotel to see the ghosts.  Those are the lights from the town, Estes Park.

On the way to Room 217.

Look, the ghosts want a little privacy.  It's 2:15 in the morning; let's give it to them...

Now that really is one cool elevator. This is on the fourth floor.

Back downstairs on our way out.

This is just beautiful, isn't it? 

Here's the one thing I didn't realize was there.  This is up on the fourth floor, the steps going up to the roof, I believe. I just stuck my camera up there and took this photo.  I had no idea this was up there:

Hehe.  Funny!

So that was our middle-of-the-night adventure.  We were there and back in about 30 minutes.  Woohoo!  But I did it.

Rocky Mountain National Park on Christmas Day

You can't even tell the wind was blowing nearly hard enough to knock over a grownup person, can you?

This was near the beginning of our drive up into the mountains. 

See our shadows?  This was Horseshoe Park, at a little scenic overlook. 

Yeah, lots and lots of wind.  FUN!!!  I was jumping up and down, it was so fun.

Yay, White Christmas!!!!

There is a "Snow Play" area just before where they close the main road that goes through the park, Trail Ridge Road.  They usually close it sometime in October and it stays closed until April or May.  It's highest elevation of any paved road in the United States.

Warming Hut.  Hahahaha.  And snow swirling around and around.

B & E at the "end of the road."

J & P on top of the world. 

You can walk past here, but you sure can't take your vehicle back there!

Normally it costs $20 per carload to go through the Rocky Mountain National Park, but no one was at the main gate. Merry Christmas!

Oh, here's what was waiting for us on the way out...

Now we're back at the villa, watching this version of The Shining.  Lasagna for dinner, and then in the morning we take the ghost tour, check out and move to our next adventure!

Merry Christmas from Estes Park

View from the deck at our villa

Here's the Stanley--when we first got there it was kind of deserted but by the time we left late this morning it was full of people.  Apparently they were there for a Christmas buffet.  We're having our own in our villa before we head out to Rocky Mountain National Park--the park entrance is about four miles from here.

I'm sure this is a lovely fountain...

If you've seen the TV movie of The Shining, you will probably recognize this staircase..

Entrance to the villa.  That's my nephew in there holding a snowball...

More later--we are off to explore the park but I know there are people (people I am related to!) who wanted me to update as often as possible.

The stockings were...by the chimney with care...

...and that's the last thing I really had to do before I collapsed in my chair. 

I have been up since 3:20 a.m. and now I'm a tad bit wired.  Apparently each villa here has its own wireless internet, pretty cool, so I am up hanging around on the Internet.  My nephew wants to take the girls on an expedition over to The Stanley at around 2:00 a.m. so they can go up on the fourth floor and also Room 217.  Merry Christmas, let's go scare ourselves!  I have decided that I should go on this expedition because of the following:

1.  They are minors.

2.   It will be 2:30 in the morning.

3.   The wind is gusting outside at up to 50 mph and it's only about 15 degrees outside.

4.   I sorta want to say I did it.

So we picked up our rental car at the airport this afternoon.  It is kind of embarrassing in its majesty.  It looks something like this:

It had 50 miles on it when we got it--a 2009 Nissan Armada.  Whoa.  I have to say it's pretty darn comfy up front.  But 9 mpg?  Ack.  No can do.  Plus, can you see how HUGE this thing is?  It's ginormous, no doubt about it.  Seats 8 comfortably.  But we still had to go buy some kind of luggage carrying contraption to strap to the top of it to fit everyone's stuff.  That's just no good.  I think it's probably over $50,000 on top of all that.  Anyway, fun to ride in, glad I will be turning it back in next week, sure it will go on lots of happy ski jaunts and also to Starbucks in service to the Aspen set.

Did I mention I was wired?  This place where we are staying is very, very comfortable.  It's just very homey.  So, I took photos.  I have no idea what it looks like outside because it was dark when we got here, but here are a few from the inside:

There are SEVEN stockings there, can you believe it?  One is hiding behind that glass vase thing.

When we arrived here at the villa tonight, everyone was completely blown away by how nice it was, even those of us who'd seen photos. 

We put together a modified version of our traditional Christmas Eve appetizer/buffet dinner in about 20 minutes flat.  Everybody was HUNGRY.  The kitchen was surprisingly well stocked.  Love the oven.  I know what I want now if the one in my house ever dies.

This is the master bedroom (after we filled stockings on it and threw our stuff around a bit).  There are two other bedrooms downstairs and then two 'living rooms.'  One has a great big TV, and one does not.  That's where I am right now.

Closeups of some of the stockings (before I got all 7 out there).

I wish I had one of these glowy ceiling deals in my house! Not going to happen, but very cool.  Sort of peaceful.

Well, I've fallen asleep three times getting this all down so it's time for me to try to get a few hours of sleep before they wake me up for Operation Ghost Hunters.  Heh.  I hope I remember the camera....and that I don't freeze.

There's really nothing like...

....Christmas at The Overlook Hotel.

 

 

As I write this, it is 7:30 a.m. and we are at the Nashville airport.  I was going to send this post, but the Starbucks Wifi is about a 20-minute walk and it's $7.95 a day to connect here.  For an hour?  Nope.  So I am going to write this and send it when we get to...

 

THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS!

 

Yep, that's the surprise!  We are staying in Estes Park, Colorado, through Friday morning.  It's a long story how I ended up with that particular location, but...oh, what else do I have to do while I wait for the Xanax kick in?  The children are all eating their Burger King breakfasts, George Strait and Josh Turner and --someone too twangy to understand but I think I heard Diamond Rio maybe?--are making canned announcements overhead every so often, and my fabulous husband went off in search of something to eat. 

OK, so back in September I was contemplating Christmas, and how we always overspend.  I started thinking that what I would really like to do is take a trip.  First I checked out cruises, but sweating at Christmas is not my idea of fun, so then I sort of asked myself what I would like from a vacation at Christmas.  Snow, and lots of it.  Maybe skiing?  So that led me to the possibilities of Jackson Hole and somewhere near the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.  Jackson Hole flights were cost prohibitive, so I started focusing on Colorado.  The Aspen-Vail-Breckenridge  locations are sorta pricy, did you know that?  After I ruled out a strictly ski vacation, I realized that what I really thought we would like was to see the Rockies.  That led me to checking out Rocky Mountain National Park, which led me to Estes Park.  I was checking out things to do there and clicked on a free classical music concert scheduled for this Sunday, and boom.  There it was.  The hotel from The Shining. 

Sooooo, pretty much after that there was no question but that Christmas at The Overlook was the way to go.  We are spending tonight and Christmas Day at The Stanley, and then on Friday morning we check out and head over to snow country.  Grand Lake, to be specific.  We are staying on a lake for four days over on the other side of the Rocky Mountain National Park.

Here's how we did it:  We decided it would need to be a surprise, so we let only the eldest child in on the secret.   Packages started to arrive with increasing frequency.  They were full of ski goggles, ski pants, ski jackets, boots, and all sorts of other things that were necessary to embark on this adventure.  I wrapped everything and stashed it under the tree, and we told the children that that was the total extent of their gifts so that they would be prepared for a tree not brimming with packages.   It was excruciatingly difficult to keep the secret, but we did it.

This morning at 3:30, we woke everyone up and told them it was time to pick up Aunt Tracie and Jonathon at the airport.  Then we sat them down and had them start opening packages.  They pretty much knew by the first one that something was up.  The first round of packages was ski jackets.  By the second one (ski pants, goggles, etc), they really knew.  Then we had them open up the guidebook to Colorado and it was all over.  There was quite a lot of screaming involved.

We were on the road by around 5:00 a.m.  That left just over an hour for P&E to pack their suitcase and get ready to go.  They were ready before I was!

We were not lying about meeting Aunt Tracie and Jonathon at the airport:  It just won't be at this airport.  We are meeting them in Denver and they will be sharing this adventure with us. 

Wifi hotspots willing, I should be blogging quite a lot in the next several days.  I am a little worried about our second location because it's very, very remote, though . Sooo, it's possible I will post my little updates until the day after Christmas and then not again until next week when we return.  We'll just have to see. 

========

OK, now we are AT the Overlook (aka The Stanley)

It is nothing short of glorious.  But we are all very tired, so I'm going to say Merry Christmas and I will update again tomorrow!

There's something happening here...

...what it is ain't exactly clear...

Well, it's clear to ME.  And to some other people.  It's just not clear to some certain children who live in this house.  I hope they are going to be surprised!  Stay tuned--I hope to let everybody in on the surprise soon....

I'm pretty much as ready as I am going to be, I think.  I do have one or two small details left to take care of, but for the most part, we could have Christmas the way things stand right now.  Yay!  That leaves us a little time to breathe and reflect on the reason for the season, right? 

I have photos to share of P's fun Sunday evening, but the camera is not where it usually is, so I will have to wait a bit on that.  They looked so gorgeous!!

I have to work tonight but after that, I'm off for a while.  Looking forward to that.  I have built up a nice stack of books to read.  Yay!  The house is clean, the laundry is slowly getting under control.  Once again, we spent too much money but I think I've already fixed that for next year--Christmas Club!  I'm already contributing to the 2009 Christmas Fund.  That seems sensible. 

If by chance I run short of time, let me say Merry Christmas now!  I have every plan to be back soon, though.

It has been gloomy and gross here for probably a solid week now...

What's up with that?  If it's going to be this gloomy, I think it might as well snow.  But it's 50 degrees, so that's not on the agenda.  It's starting to get downright depressing.  OK, not really.  Downright depressing would be, well, still being stuck in Florida with absolutely NO chance of snow.

I think the last of the Christmas packages should arrive soon.  There is one more coming.  Well, two.  But one won't make it by Christmas, I'm thinking. 

We are thinking about a road trip for 4-5 days after our family leaves sometime after Christmas.  I would dearly love to visit NYC again, but I think we only have 5 days and that seems like kind of a hike.  Then I thought, "Well, we've never been to Chicago."  But...snow storms and stuff?  Not sure if that's a smart plan.  So, where can we go that's within a day's drive of Nashville that would be fun, do you think?  (DON'T SAY FLORIDA!)

I'm opening the floor to suggestions.  (DON'T SAY FLORIDA!)