Day 2 - Off to Vail

Anna and I slept like a rock last night. I think we rolled out of bed around 7am and slowly got our stuff together. We hit the road about 8:15 and planned to head out and have breakfast in Vail. As in most times, plans changed and we ended up stopping in Dillon at Arapaho Café, where Ashley and I ate back in August. Unfortunately, the café was closed, but we found a unique little place call Red Mountain Grill.

There was a young little lady with a shirt that just didn’t make the cut. This wasn’t even a belly shirt. It wouldn’t have been bad but belly hung way out and she had the midriff show on purpose. It was one of those things you didn’t want to see but couldn’t stop watching.

The food was great. We were the first ones to eat. Anna got a breakfast platter with sausage and eggs. I went a little more extra and ordered a Salmon Benny. It was a salmon, egg, and blue cheese egg muffin. The design in the restaurant was very eclectic with some really outstanding lighting chandeliers all over the ceiling. After some beers and Bloody Marys, we got back on the road of headed to Vail.

Straight west on I-70, we managed to get to Vail about 30 minutes later. Vail was not what I expected. We were both a little underwhelmed! It was a cute and quaint little town and we could see how this place would be lit up during ski season, but right now was not the time to really be there. It had a cute little village with some stores and gluten of restaurants. We stayed in Vail for maybe an hour and decided to head back towards Denver.

The next stop was Frisco. We came in from the west, so we took the exit that took us straight through Main Street. We decided to hop over to Breckenridge for a quick stop to visit the Organic Therapy place before coming back to Frisco to eat at Propst. I had seen Propst the last few times we were in Frisco and contemplated eating there but never got the chance. It’s a German restaurant and we had some brats and a couple of beers. The brats were amazing! Really yummy! I felt like we had been on an eating and drinking tour. Awesome.

With bellies full, we headed down the mountain. Swung in at Copper Mountain to see if we could get on a gondola. It was a bit deceiving as we saw multiple people on the chair lifts going up. However, the people going up were ski teams testing out the slope. We were not allowed to ride up. So, we did whatever one should have done and sat in one of their loungers, drank a beer, and what the gondola. The place was a ghost town. Since it was out of season, there was literally almost no one around. Kind of eerie!

Back in the car and off we went. Anna saw a cute little town and we decided to stop at Silver Plume. When I say this was an old town, I mean this was a very old town. Gravel roads, buildings from the early 1800s, and it felt like this place was totally stuck back in time. We got a bit and walked around and thanked our lucky stars that we very fortunate.

Earlier in the day we heard about a train ride that you could get on for 4, 6, or 8 hours and wanted to ride it, but later found out that the ride was closed. We did, however, go by the place on the way back at Georgetown and stopped in to look at the rail yard. Quaint place and surely would have been fun to see the terrain from a train. Maybe next time.

Off to Idaho Springs where we spent the rest of the day. It was a beautiful little town, which coming from the interstate you wouldn’t think to stop at, but Anna called it and we had a great time. It was an old town with beautiful architecture with modern amenities. Part of the town had its old flare on Main Street where it kept all its historic charm and then had its newer builds a block out with more up to date structures.

Anna and I ate at MTN Prime. The food was by far the best quality and value since we got here. Anna had a phenomenal prime rib and I had rainbow trout. Both of the meals were exceptional and the service was awesome. Now that I had completely shoved the max into my pie hole, we slowly rolled to the car and headed back to the hotel. It wasn’t long after getting back that we finally crashed out, or tried to.