January 25-28 2012

Winter Park

We usually visit Karen’s brother and his family in Salt Lake City during the winter. We also go skiing for a day or two. This year we plan to visit Jerry in the summer so this gave us a chance to plan a ski trip to Colorado instead.

I found a great deal on VRBO for a Condo at Founder’s Point in Winter Park, including tax and cleaning fees it was about $130 per night.

We booked our tickets on Delta using a $400 voucher that I had gotten for taking a later flight back from New York in April. The voucher covered all but$35 of the cost of Karen and my tickets.

I always use Hot Wire when booking a car, they usually are $100 cheaper than booking directly with the rental agency. I got a mid sized car for about $130. I found out after I book that the rental agency was Budget.

It’s a short hour and a half flight from Minneapolis to Denver.  We were lucky enough to get exit row seats. We arrived on time but it took half an hour to get a gate.

After collecting our bags it was a short bus ride to Budget. I had a very short wait at the counter. The rental agent tried every line in the book to get me to upgrade to a SUV. I accepted the upgrade when he got the price down to $17 per day extra.

We got a Jeep Compass. It sits a little higher than my TT so it took a little getting use to. The tires were terrible, since the car had 30,000 miles and the tires looked new I am guessing that they got some junker tires off another vehicle. The problem with the tires was they screamed at highway speeds, they were annoyingly loud on I70. I later discovered by accident that when I hit the key fob to lock the doors the tailgate didn’t lock. I pointed this out when I dropped the car off.

One of the things I like about Karen is that she looks at things from a completely different vantage point than I do. If it was up to me I would have hit McDonald for lunch but we passed a Whole Foods on I70 so we got off at the next exit. We got groceries for the week and bought lunch at the deli. It was a beautiful 60 degree day in Denver so we ate outside.

GPS drive on my IPhone  guided me to the condo. We had a key for the condo but not for the garage so I had to wait outside while Karen ran in and got the garage key from the kitchen table per the instructions that the owner mailed to us.

Once in the garage we parked by the elevator and loaded our luggage and groceries on a cart provided by the condo and hauled everything up to the condo. The building looks small from the front but the diminutive entrance hides the sprawling complex located behind it.

The condo was nice, much better than the condo we rented in Park City. It had a full kitchen complete with most every cooking utility that we might need. It didn’t have a full sized refrigerator but it was large enough for our needs. The bathroom was large with a glass shower and soaking tub big enough for two. The dining room/living room area  was average sized and had a large screen TV and gas fireplace. The bedroom had a king size bed but there were only two small bed stands with drawers to store our clothes.

Once we unpacked we drove to Epic Mountain Sports to rent our equipment. The people (kids compared to us) working at the rental shop were very courteous and helpful. The kid that helped us had gone to college in Minnesota. The person operating the register gave us a coupon from on of the discount books in the shop saving us 20% off the total price.

We walked to Deno’s Mountain Bistro for dinner. Karen and I had the linguine in clam sauce. We both thought it was very good.

After dinner we went back to the condo, stored our skis in the ski locker, watched a little TV and tried unsuccessfully  to sleep. When I went to Bolivia for work I discovered that I cannot sleep at altitude. I didn’t have a problem sleeping in Park City at 7000 feet but I got almost no sleep in Winter Park at 9100 feet. Karen had the same problems that I did. I decided if we come back next year that I would get a prescription for the altitude. I only got about an hour of sleep that night and Karen didn’t do much better.

The next morning we felt terrible and we were moving slow so we didn’t made it out to the slopes until 10 am. We weren’t sure how to get to the slopes from the condo but we discovered the quickest way is to walk out of our condo across the street through the lobby of Zephyr Mountain Lodge and the chair lift is just out the door.

We suffered a little sticker shock when purchasing lift tickets. You can usually find discount lift tickets in town or on line but the cheapest I found was $79, not realizing that a lift ticket would run me $99 per day I passed it up. I tried to buy tickets at the ski shop but they told me they don’t sell them and Winter Park has complete control over who can sell lift tickets to keep the price high. They did say the best deal was to get an Entertainment book because it had $45 lift tickets. Something I will remember for next year.

We hopped on the Zephyr Express lift and rode up the mountain. It was a glorious day to be skiing. The sky was a deep blue, there wasn’t any wind and it made it into the thirties in the afternoon. We eventually made our way over to Mary Jane. We had heard that the Panoramic lift was open for the first time this year so we took it up to the bowl and skied the easier runs.

We had lunch at the cafeteria at Mary Jane base. I had chili and Karen had a sandwich. They were both good. Skiing had woken me up, I didn’t feel like I only had one hour sleep the night before.

After lunch we stayed on Mary Jane. We skied Roundhouse a lot. I’m not a really good mogul skier but the bumps at the bottom of Roundhouse were perfect for me.  We made our way back to Winter Park base by the end of the day.

The condo had an outdoor whirlpool, we stopped to check the temperature on the way back to our room. Not nearly warm enough for me to walk outside on my swimsuit. The soaking tub in our room was a much better option.

Several people had written about the Cheeky Monk located in the Village which is across from our condo so we could walk there. It is named the Cheeky Monk because the specialized in Belgian beer and I love Belgian ale. One of the comments in the guest book was a complaint about the tiny $9 beer. Belgian beer is expensive.

I had a burger and Karen had a salad with chicken breast. Both dishes were good but  expensive, I suppose because it’s located at the base of the mountain. I had a Delirium Tremens  and  when my beer was delivered to the table I understood the comment in the guest book, it was only about six ounces and it cost $9.

Both Karen and I slept a little better we got almost four hours of sleep. When we looked out our condo window and saw the mountain covered by clouds. The temperature had dropped overnight, the wind had picked up and it was snowing.

We had breakfast at the condo and walked across the street to start our day of skiing. It was overcast, the wind was howling and it was snowing as we rode the lift up. We skied the the easy runs at Winter Park for a while before we decided that Mary Jane would be better protected from the wind. We made our way to Mary Jane just in time to for lunch. We ate at the restaurant because the cafeteria was completely full. Lunch at the restaurant wasn’t much more expensive than the cafeteria.

We had thought about skiing the bowl after lunch but the Panoramic lift was closed because of the weather conditions. We spent the afternoon skiing Mary Jane.  At the end of the day we took Corridor back to Winter Park. It’s a short run that goes from the base of Mary Jane to Winter Park base.

We put our skis in the the condo ski locker and went back to the Cheeky Monk for happy hour. I love Belgian beer and stouts and the Cheeky Monkey has a lot to choose from. I had a Left Hand Milk Sout that was good but not great. I saw that a women sitting next to us at the boar was drinking a St Bernardus Quad so I decided to make that my second beer and it was excellent!

The guy that had rented our skis to us had recommended the New Hong Kong restaurant. It is located in the shopping center across from Epic Mountain sports. After dropping our skis off we had dinner at the New Hong Kong. We didn’t care for the restaurant, our waitress was very short to us, almost of the point of being rude. The food was just okay, if we come back to Winter Park next year we probably won’t eat here again.

Our flight back on Saturday was at 5:50 PM. We had planned on hanging out in Winter Park. We got up, had breakfast and packed our suitcases. We walled across the street to the Village and checked out the shops. We drove into the town of Winter Park, it didn’t take very long to drive through. We had checked out the shops the previous night.

We decided to head back to Denver early. On the way we called delta and changed to an earlier flight. We had to pay the $50 change fee. It does suck that you can’t stand by anymore. Banks and Airlines make their money from fees now days, a sad state of business.

We were home by 7:30 PM. It was nice to have Sunday to get unpacked and caught up before going back to work.

Recap

Founders Point Condos

This is a great place to stay. The condo is nice, spacious, comfortable and ideally located. We are already thinking about booking again next year.

Winter Park and Mary Jane

If you are an expert skier you might not be challenged by the ski resorts but I really like skiing the bumps at Mary Jane and the bowl isn’t bad either. I have to mention the lift operators and the other people that work at the resort, they are the best. Lift operators at other resorts are nice but you get at least one operator that has his earphones on and doesn’t seem to pay a lot of attention to anyone. Everyone at Winter park was friendly, positive and helpful.

Budget Car Rental

The representatives working the desk are a little pushy but the prices are reasonable so I would rent from them again.