Gosh, this week sure flew by — in a good way. Daddy Mac, the Saminator and I all had an equally great time in Vail, no easy feat since Daddy Mac and I were up for some faux outdoorsiness, new sights, cool shopping, and interesting restaurants. On the other hand, Sam had an entirely different agenda as is a preschooler’s perogative — trains, new toys, ice cream, cookies, swimming, and lots and lots of TV on his new portable DVD player, worth its weight in platinum for the plane ride alone. Much to its credit Vail surpassed all of our expectations by a few alpine miles. There is no escaping the outdoorsiness here, the little river runs right through town glistening in the sun, even rushing noisily by our condo. (No, I did not call the “super” to complain about the ongoing racket.)
We took a day trip to Aspen to see what we could see. As it turns out, it is a small old-time Western town for uber-wealthy people who want Rocky Mountain casual but also want the accessibility of many of the same designer stores found on Rodeo Drive. As Bernie aptly put it, “It’s like living in a college town without the college.” Yes, but this college happens to be filled with multi-millionaires with private jets, Porshe 911s just for the summer months, and some pocket change. It seems like a great place to come live for a while, not necessarily geared to tourists passing through town for a week or so, like Vail.
Aspen is about a two hour drive from Vail, so Sam was antsy during the entire ride to get there and get the heck out of the car. OK. Perfectly understandable. The plot thickens — naturally. Once we were finally there, he immediately said he wanted to go back to our hotel, which of course was a two hour jaunt over a string of large mountains at that point. Not happening, little dude. After getting some ice cream to cajole Sam into submission and numb our own rising frustration, we did some extremely brief window shopping (more like “window glancing”) and got the heck out of dodge pretty quickly.
We took a different route home, longer yet infinitely more scenic, definitely worth the three plus hours — to us at least. Check off the Continental Divide, a truly spectacular sight! Then we truly understood why the richest of the rich chose Aspen above all other location options to have a second (or third or fourth) home. Needless to say, Sam was not so pleased and wouldn’t even deign to get out of the car and take a gander at the truly awesome sights. Kids these days, I tell you! (The word “grumpy” comes to mind!) However, the real kicker was that once we got back “home” to Vail, he IMMEDIATELY begged to go back to Aspen the next day and continued to ask all week long. I just don’t get it AT ALL. It’s a good thing he is so cute, it may have saved his life. Freud would have a field day, I’m sure, hopefully in a valley surrounded by the mountains outside of Aspen. Aaaah, I’m sure God smiled after making those!
LibbY
How gorgeous! Vacation certainly agrees with you guys