A Quick Trip to Breckenridge

In these days of "safer at home," due to the novel coronavirus still being very active, my husband and I have not been going out too frequently, except for food shopping every week or quick visits with our immediate family using social distancing. It has been a strange beginning of the summer for that reason, as we would have traveled quite a few places already if there had been no restrictions. Honestly, we both worry quite a bit about not having a good outcome if we were to get ill with COVID, so staying home seems a better alternative right now.

But that fact doesn't mean we can't relive some wonderful memories that I never had a chance to blog about! In August 2019, my husband's sister and brother-in-law visited us for a week from their home in Arizona, and we drove them to some of our favorite places while they were visiting.  We were excited to drive to the ski resort town of Breckenridge one day, which is about an hour and a half drive from our home.  Since Breckenridge is so close to where we live we've visited it many times in the seven years we've lived in Colorado.  We've seen it in all seasons,  We saw the winter ice castles, took a sleigh ride, saw the snow sculpture competition, and enjoyed the summer fun park and hiking on the mountains top when my older brother and sister-in-law visited, which included a thrilling ride down a mountain on a snowcat during a thunder and lightning storm!  If you want to see those posts you can scroll through all them all on this search label on my blog: Breckenridge.

The view in the photo above is the iconic first view of the Rocky Mountains from Interstate 70 going west.  It never fails to take my breath away!

Traveling west we cut through the Colorado foothills.

Every now and then we could see tall peaks peeking through on the horizon.

Mountain driving is always an adventure! We drive through the continental divide through the Eisenhower Tunnel.  At an elevation of 11,158 feet, (3,401m), it is the highest vehicular tunnel in the US, and the longest mountain tunnel and the highest point on the US Interstate Highway System.  The downward grade is rather steep on exiting the tunnel, so there are quite a few "runaway truck ramps" on the side of the road in case a truck loses its brakes.

We soon begin to see ski runs on the mountain slopes as we approach Breckenridge.

 As soon as we drove into town we decided to take the gondola ride up to the ski resort village.

The mountains of Breckenridge have 5 peaks, 187 trails, 2,908 acres, and the highest lift-served terrain in North America. The resort village has dining, an alpine slide, and other rides, a ski chair lift, horseback riding, rafting, golf, fishing, etc. We had lunch at the grill and had hoped to take the chair lift to the top of the mountain to see the views and hike a bit, but, unfortunately, our brother-in-law began to experience some altitude sickness.   Since we were over 12,000 feet elevation we knew we had to go back down to the town's lower elevation where he would feel better, and took the gondola ride back down.

We gave our brother-in-law water and he rested at the Breckenridge Welcome Center, where he felt much better. He told us to go on and enjoy the town so we took a quick walk up and down the main street to show my sister-in-law the sights.

The Victorian core of this former mining town is preserved as the Breckenridge National Historic District, running primarily along Main Street, with colorfully painted buildings from the 1880s and '90s housing shops, galleries, and restaurants.

A vintage wagon

The town is very scenic!

A couple of interesting sculptures--click on the photo to enlarge it and read about "Tom's Baby"

Since we did not want to leave our brother-in-law sitting alone at the Welcome Center for too long we soon returned and drove back to our home which is at a lower elevation of around 6,000 feet on the front range. He was fine--except for a slight lingering headache.

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Back to our house and feeling 100% better!

My sister-in-law found the funny t-shirt for him in a Breckenridge shop and we all had a good laugh about our dizzy high altitude adventure!

Happy 4th of July!

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