“It’s about the experience,” says our guide Trevor Clapper from the Little Nell Adventure Shop, which offers trips that end in Basalt, about 20 miles downriver. Clapper says of everything people want to do in the summer or fall when they come to Aspen—off road jeep tours, guided hiking trips, white river rafting—fly fishing is the most popular.
In summer, it’s all about bikers, runners, walkers. Many people opt to bike from the trailhead in Aspen about 10 miles as far as Woody Creek Tavern; today we opt to go another 10 miles to visit the new Woody Creek Distillery—where vodka is being made from potatoes grown in Woody Creek.
The adults are busy catching up while the kids swim and play, but this isn’t any waterfront playground on a late summer day. This is a unique playground for penguins — “Antarctica: Empire of the Penguins” — the largest expansion ever at SeaWorld Orlando.
I spent all day in the kitchen—on vacation. But maybe because it was my choice and maybe because it’s a spectacular kitchen at a Portico Club house overlooking the mountains in Snowmass, CO, I didn’t mind a bit.
In fact, because the kitchen was so well equipped—and the house so spacious—we decided to host a barbeque for folks we know who live here and who always are hosting us when we visit.
Snowmass is a great family ski mountain—one of the biggest and best in the country, in fact. But a visit here—and to neighboring Aspen—is a treat any time of year. There’s hiking, biking (road biking and mountain biking), fly fishing, rafting… even a scenic helicopter tour.
We’re in one of the most amazing rental houses we’ve ever been privileged to visit—and we’ve been to a lot of places from houses in the Caribbean to ski condos in Colorado and Utah and Vermont to apartments in Paris and Rome.
I’d always wanted to do the famous hike between Crested Butte in Southwest Colorado and Aspen –12.2 miles along the West Maroon trail, crossing the Maroon Pass which is 12,500 feet high. And in the year since— as we get ready to meet up with family for a week at a Portico Club rental house in Snowmass, up the road from Aspen–I’ve thought a lot about that hike.
I like to see a resort get it right and, I think, the Whiteface Lodge does. The 94-suite resort is spread out over 40 acres reminiscent of the historic “camps” of the Adirondacks with rough-hewn logs, big stone fireplaces, oversized leather furniture and whimsical décor evoking the outdoors.
Fourteen year old Massou Traore spreads out her arms and looks skyward. She feels like she’s on top of the world.
Well, not quite. She’s 4,867 feet on top of New York State to be exact—on top of Whiteface Mountain. Pretty amazing to a kid from the Bronx.
You’ll be spending the Long Goodbye shuttling back and forth to stores crowded with other freshmen parents for “essentials” you didn’t bring from home. In our case, that included a tool kit needed to loft the beds in my daughter Mel’s dorm room so the girls had more floor space.
TakingTheKids