Day 46-47: Flurrying Through the Rocky Mountains, Colorado

In the morning, we briefly checked out Idaho Springs, founded during the Gold Rush. It is apparently the most populous municipality in Clear Creek County, Colorado, but the population is still pretty small, at 1,782 people! The town still very much looks like an old mining town with buildings from that era, so we found it kind of funny to see a sign for the “business center” when we entered, because to most people, that conjures up images of a financial district rather than the mining district we were seeing here! 

Breckenridge, A Beautiful Colorado Ski Town

Idaho Springs was chilly with an icy wind, so after our brief stop we continued on to Breckenridge, home to one of the skiing resorts in Colorado, which has the highest chairlift in North America. The town is beautiful and historic, with many buildings dating back to the gold mining era. There are a lot of expensive-looking houses in the quintessentially winter cabin style that we drove through and gawked at. Lisette took a photo of one house just as someone drove past and gave us a weird look, only for us to then realize it was their home as they turned into the driveway! It was snowing as we drove through, which made driving along these residential roads more scenic, but it was also freezing–we could see that beneath the cars, grey-colored stalactites were forming underneath. Brrr! 

When we arrived at the center of the town, we continued to gape at the charming buildings and boutique stores, while breathing in the fresh mountain air. We fortunately found a place to park close to the visitor center, but unfortunately we learned that you can’t drive an RV into the center of town, as the fine is about $100! We hadn’t seen any signs alerting us of this, but the only place that RVs can park is the Airport Road parking lot. From here, there are free, regular shuttles that go up to the ski resort. As for a place for RVs and oversized vehicles to park at night, there is only one RV park on the outskirts of town. 

At the Airport parking lot, there were many cars parked, and we walked outside as the snow stopped, picking up the soft snow that looked like it could make a dense snowball, only to find the snow quickly disintegrated in our hands. As it was getting late in the afternoon, many people were starting to return to the carpark from their day of skiing or snowboarding, and Michael spoke to a local where we learned that it’s very expensive to go skiing! It would cost us about $250 each for a ski pass, in addition to however much it would cost to rent skiing gear. While we would have loved to have skied for a day, we couldn’t justify this high expense, unfortunately. 

Our kettle stopped working in the RV about a week ago, and Lisette has been missing it immensely, as boiling water in the microwave is definitely not the same (and there’s no temperature settings, which is critical for a tea connoisseur!). So we ended up at a Walmart in the adjacent town of Frisco, where we got what we hope to be a longer-lasting kettle than its predecessor. We decided to sleep in the Walmart parking lot, and started a trend as soon other vans and RVs joined us for the evening. 

Frozen Pipes and Hot Springs

It had been a cold night, and when Lisette got up to make tea, she immediately noticed that the kitchen taps weren’t working–uh oh, they are frozen! The shower taps also weren't operating, just the ones in the bathroom. Having the furnace on overnight didn’t end up helping to keep our pipes thawed. 

Naturally, we were nervous about staying in the cold, and we could see that snow was coming down quite heavily up in the mountains, creating poor visibility. It seemed that skiing in Breckenridge, or even going up the mountains in a ski lift to check it out, was out of the question now, so we continued driving through the Rocky Mountains, arriving in Vail, the largest ski resort in Colorado that looked like it could have been plucked out of the Alps. Despite being the largest, the town was still a tight squeeze for our RV, with virtually nowhere to stop and park. Instead, we did a scenic drive through the main streets, where we passed chalets, brick buildings looking like they’d been borrowed from a storybook, French restaurants and cafes, and people ambling around in their latest ski gear. 

Glenwood Springs

Given our challenges navigating the Rocky Mountains in our RV, the logical decision was to continue on to Glenwood Springs, a resort city nestled in the Rocky Mountains, but at a much lower elevation. We noticed that the temperature seemed to be somewhat warmer once we arrived, although it wasn’t long before we experienced a flurry (new weather term unlocked! It’s a swirling mass of snow moved by sudden gusts of wind), as we ate our lunch inside the RV, although the cars here were bereft of the grey stalactites and snow covered roofs and windshields that were typical of where we’d just come from. 

Glenwood Springs is home to several hot springs, and we decided that we’d go to one of them while we were here to soak our muscles and unwind the following day. There’s a small and quaint downtown area, and as it turned out, we were reminded of our time in Tombstone as Doc Holliday lived here before he died, as there are some shops, bars, and restaurants commemorating him and reminiscent of the old Wild West. 

Route Map