Thanksgiving, Colorado Style

Our first major holiday in Colorado is my favorite of all holidays, Thanksgiving! While it’s difficult to not be able to spend it with family, we were able to make good memories of it by spending it in the Mountains at a ski resort. Hopefully this is something we will make a tradition out of, because it was a lot of fun!

We went up on Wednesday and left a little early in hopes of beating the traffic into the mountains. One thing you will hear from people that live in Colorado is that going into the mountains, while awesome, is severely compromised by the traffic on I70. At only 2 lanes for a long ways, many, MANY resorts to service by that road, and unpredictable weather, it can be tricky to navigate. We were lucky and made it up in the basic standard, about 90 minutes from our house (maybe a little more, but it was in that general timeframe).

Our place, setup by Maylee and Steve, was right in the Central Village of Copper Mountain, in the same building as Endo’s, a popular bar and eatery at the base of the mountain. The condo was a combination of three rooms, two bedrooms and a kitchen/living area with doors between. One interesting feature was that we had three exits to the hallway, a feature that Quinton took advantage of to “prank” us. He snuck out the bedroom door, then knocked on the main door and slippped this note in the door as he ran away.

On Thursday we mainly cooked, ate, watched football, and drank. Maylee and Steve actually went on the mountain and did some runs, but the Grady’s stayed put and relaxed while the Turkey and things cooked, and while football happened. Based on the Packer’s performance, a home loss to the hapless Bears, I rather like to think that football really didn’t happen, but Steve, a Lions fan, had a great football weekend…

Friday was a ski day! Quinton went to the world famous Copper Mountain Ski School to break in his new snowboard. The rest of us headed up the mountain and did some early season skiing. I was shocked at how competent Ethan was on skis. We’ve had him on skis off and on since the age of three - he actually started at the Copper Mountain Ski School as a three year old 11 years ago! But we haven’t done a LOT of skiing over the years. Didn’t matter - he was in control and skied everything that we were able to. By the end of the second day he was ready to do harder stuff and was complaining that Jenny and I were too slow!

Saturday was much the same as Friday, except this time we had Quinton with us. I took him on Green Acres to start with, a smaller hill designated for beginners. By the end of the day he was ready for the big lift and the big hill. It was fun watching him learn throughout the day. He has a ways to go to be “good,” but he loves doing it, and doesn’t get discouraged by falling. He just gets up and keeps trying. He will be a lot of fun to watch as he gets more experience!

On Friday night, Santa visited the village, riding down on a Snowcat as part of the Snowcat Parade. Quinton and I watched from the bottom of the mountain and had great spots to see Santa get out and go to his seat in the village square. Santa and Mrs. Clause actually walked right past us! Quinton was staring and studying them hard. After they passed, Quinton gave me a knowing look and said quite plainly, “that’s not Santa.” Oh well…

All in all it was a fun weekend. We made some new friends, ate well, drank a lot, and got to do some nice early season skiing. Now that I’m using Google Photos, it does all sorts of cool stuff, like take your photos and videos from a common location and time and creates automatic video collages with them. This one turned out pretty well. Check it out Here!!!