The Traveling Martens

Denver and Ski trip

We've just returned from skiing for the past week. One day here at home, and then we're off to Tampa, Florida for a few days. We'll be adding pictures of our Steamboat trip as soon as we can.

Last Thursday was Stacy's last day at AG Edwards. After a fun happy hour that night, our flight left bright and early the next morning for Denver (ah, the sunshine state!). We spent the day (April 1 - Mel's birthday!) walking around downtown Denver. We went to a tapas restaurant called Ninth Door for a great dinner that night, then to the Church nightclub and heard Steve Porter who was DJing. The Church was a fun place, actually in an old church with lots of separate rooms, very similar to Limelight in New York. Bright and early the next day (April 2 - Stacy's birthday!), we met Mel's mom and niece Samantha in Denver for breakfast and then drove up to their house in Steamboat Springs.

We've been to Tahoe, Whistler, Vail, etc, but Steamboat is the best all around combination of skiing terrain, scenery, no crowds (unlike Tahoe), and small, ski-town environment. The mountain had received about a foot of snow a few days before we got there, but our first day of skiing was sunny and 50 degrees- what could be better? The weather was sunny again the second day, and Stacy took a lesson while Mel wore himself out skiing moguls. The third day, we woke up to snow, and quickly headed up the mountain. It was snowing hard and visibility was close to zero on the top half of the mountain. We skiied together in the morning, while about 8-10 inches of new snow fell; it was Stacy's first time skiing in fresh powder and she did great. That afternoon, Stacy went for another lesson, while Mel got a private bumps lesson from a coach on the Steamboat winter sports club, the local skiing group that trains all the Olympians that come from Steamboat. Our fourth day of skiing was sunny and 60 degrees, with plenty of fresh snow left from the day before. The mountain was nearly deserted, so we had runs to ourselves, and skiied to the peaks just to enjoy the view. The scenery is incredible, seeing snow-capped mountains in every direction; we felt as if we were standing on top of the world. We started heading down the mountain for our last run of the day. At the top, we were nearly above the tree line and snow was everywhere. By the middle of the mountain, we were surrounded by snow covered trees and enjoying the snow. By the bottom of the mountain, we were practically skiing through slush, and we came out of the forests at the base to see people laying out in bikinis by the pools at all the condos at the base. It felt like we'd just gone through three seasons, winter to spring to summer, in our 45 minute descent! We ended at the Slopeside Grill, which is the local happy hour hang-out. About a hundred local skiiers (and their dogs) were all sitting in plastic chairs out in the snow listening to music, talking and playing cards. We finished our last night with dinner at a great Mexican restaurant in Steamboat with Mel's family.

Now we're back in St Louis long enough to unpack, do laundry, mow the lawn, and repack for Florida. Mel has never seen Tampa before, and Stacy hasn't seen much of it, so we're excited to go check it out and see if it might be the new homebase of The Traveling Martens.

posted by Mel and Stacy Marten @ 10:43 AM