Day 25 : Snowmass to Steamboat

The view from our balcony -
if you look the other direction
you get to see the sunset over the mountains.

Today was our last travel day between ski resorts. It was a short trip - only 3 hours. However the trip was made slightly longer because we have had a slowly leaking tyre for a couple of weeks. We decided to call into the Enterprise office (car rental company) at Glenwood Springs to get the tyre checked out. Glenwood Springs is the town at the junction where the road from Aspen meets the I70 - the main road through to Denver. Of course the car rental offices were nowhere near the main shopping strip of Glenwood Springs. If they had been, the hour and a half that we had to wait for them to sort out what to do with the tyre would have been much more entertaining.
Eventually they replaced the tyre, because we had rented the car in Los Angeles, they had to get permission from the California office to replace the tyre!

We headed off again about 11.30 from Glenwood Springs, via Eagle where we stopped for lunch at a very nice cafe. John really wanted to stop at the Costco Food Court, but I wouldn't let him! Yes there is a Costco in Eagle, Colorado, I think it might just be bigger than the town of Eagle itself. There is an airport at Eagle, which is the closest airport to Vail, I think this is why there is a Costco there, people fly in, then go shopping at Costco before they head off to their condos.

We left the I70 not long after Eagle to drive north to Steamboat Springs. Once again the scenery was spectacular, with a lot of the drive across high open plains. This area was a bit more inhabited than other areas we have driven through, so as well as scenery we had lots of ranches to look at.

We had booked our place at Steamboat off the internet, and taken a punt that the ski-in ski-out location was really as good as it says. Looks like it will be; definitely it is ski-in at the end of the day. So much easier than having to carry your skis back after a long day of skiing, walking in ski boots. We think ski-out, may need a short walk before we can ski out - we can live with that. At least in the morning you are fresh and energetic.

Just listening to the weather - lots of snow on the east coast of US, but here it is just blue skies and sunshine. There is lots of snow on the ground but we would like a bit of fresh snow before we leave. Hoping that tomorrow night brings some snow.

Easy drive today and very scenic - lucky the second time we went to check on the car it was all happening (approvals obtained from LA) - Margo doesn't do waiting very well but leaves it up to me to get "American angry" which is my description of American's thumping the table and getting very loud to get their way (it is a very service oriented country!) Happily no one needed to get angry!

Just one example of the many signs we saw

All the way from Eagle we saw homemade roadside signs for a "cowboy outfitter shop" - git yer stetsons, git yer cowboy boots etc etc Lucky the road was not that remote or we would have had a "should have bought a squirrel" moment (ed - from the movie "Rat Race") - we went into the shop when we arrived - never seen so many cowdy hats and boots  - sneak look at the boots - $860 - Cowboys must be on a good wicket out here!!!

First words when we entered the condo were - we lucked out here!

It is an older set of condos but we don't care too much about that - it has a spa close, a ski locker on the ground floor - 20 meter walk from ski in and probably 100 meters (downhill!) to ski out - have to verify that tomorrow.