Mountain Trip for Tara and Brent

As a late birthday celebration trip, Tara and I headed up for a weekend getaway in the mountains.  Our first stop was the Tivoli lodge in Vail.  This lodge is nestled about 100 meters away from the bottom of the ski slope and was super nice.  It had a cabin feel to it but was very upscale.  At this time of year, we had an amazing view of the aspens changing colors right outside our window.  The temperature was great and we could just open the windows for some nice mountain fresh air.

After getting settled in at the lodge, we headed out towards some open roads on the bikes.  Sometimes it's a bit hard to find good routes at a place you aren't that familiar with, but we ended up heading West out of town and then took a road that climbed South up through some hills.

It wasn't the longest ride, but I think we got about an hour of good climbing in before reaching the top of the road.  Here we are at the top before heading down.  Tara got to work on her climbing skills and then followed it up by getting some extra practice on descending.  I don't believe she feels like she enjoys the hills as much as I do...

After searching later that night for a restaurant in Vail that you didn't have to have a reservation for (which apparently is very difficult) we did find a nice Mexican restaurant.  This was followed up by a really nice buffet breakfast at the lodge before wishing it farewell for this year.  On the way home we were thinking it would be nice to hike some (or all) of Grey's and Torrey's.  As we got a late start, the "some" seemed more reasonable.  I actually forgot how crazy the dirt road is to get to the trailhead is for these two peaks.  My nerves were tested a few times as I contemplated turning around in the wet/muddy jeep trail.  We did, however, finally make it and hiked for a while...though some rain/snow started moving in and we probably called it an earlier day that I had originally hoped for.  It was a great weekend for some rest and relaxation time for just the two of us.