At the end of March, while the boys were on their spring break from school, we took a trip to Colorado. Aunt Marilyn had to attend some classes at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs and Christie’s cousin, Mark Pieper lives in Frisco in the heart of ski country. 
Since flying all of us out west would have blown the vacation budget, we made the long trip via car…..well SUV. We spent the first part of the trip in Colorado Springs. We were really looking forward to attending church service on Sunday morning at the beautiful Chapel on the campus of the United States Air Force Academy. However when we arrived there on Sunday morning, we were very disappointed to find the chapel closed because the cadets were on their spring break. We went to the visitors center on campus instead and had a good time there. Later we visited the Garden of the Gods, and Manitou Springs.
Later in the week, we made the trip to Frisco, where Mark lives. We spent time walking around downtown Frisco and another day we drove to Breckenridge and did some shopping there as well. Talk about a small world…..as we were walking around Breckenridge, Christie ran into our neighbor Tom Sloan. Tom also works at IWU. We had no idea that he would be there. It’s funny that we had to travel 1200 miles to see someone who just lives down the street. On Thursday Mark wanted to take the boys tubing. We purchased some sleds and tubs and headed to a local sledding hill. We had a blast there.
On Friday, we went to Arapahoe Basin to go skiing. This was the anticipated highlight of the trip. The boys had never been skiing before and it had been 15 years since I last skied. Christie’s leg and knee were still bothering her so she stayed in the lodge.
The boys did a great job and they picked up on it very well. Marilyn spent most of the time with Gibson and Grant on the beginner hill, although they did make one trip up to the mid-mountain to go down the bigger slopes. However this is where Gibson really started to struggle. He was getting exhausted and just couldn’t ski anymore so he wanted to walk the rest of the way down the mountain.
Gannon got the hang of skiing pretty well and I was pleasantly surprised that I picked up right where I left off 15 years ago. I told Gannon that “the old man still has the skill, but I just don’t have the stamina. The lack of oxygen at 12,000 feet certainly didn’t help my out-of-shape physical condition!
Towards the end of the day Gannon and I had the brilliant idea that for our last run we would take the chairlift from mid-mountain all the way to the summit of the mountain. We had been skiing the intermediate runs from mid-mountain to the base without too much difficulty.
To make a long story short, we had a heck of a time navigating our way down the mountain from the top. The runs were much steeper and the snow was much deeper, which made it harder to control. I had a major wipeout and Gannon had a few as well. We were so exhausted when we finally made our way back to the lodge. We had quite a father-son bonding experience with that adventure!
Although we had a great time out west, we were glad to finally get back home to Indiana. Like they say, there’s no place like home!
