Weekend in Vail

Besides selling the cars and meeting Karen’s kids (my brother’s girlfriend), the other main goals for my trip to Vail were to bring Randy a few boxes of childhood mementos from our mom’s house, and also to fulfill my mom’s wish to have her remaining ashes scattered atop one of the pretty mountains surrounding Vail.  We also managed to plug in a trip to the farmer’s market, attend some ballet performances, and enjoy a few really nice meals out as well.

First stop was to the Minturn Farmer’s Market.  Minturn is a cute little old mining town between Vail and Edwards.  Their market was in full swing when we arrived:

This town has a great sense of humor—even their garden club takes themselves lightly!

I skipped on the artwork, but did a few bags of fresh Colorado peaches for my hosts.

Later in the afternoon, Randy and I went to watch Karen’s daughter, Lauren, dance in downtown Vail at the dance-a-thon, a charity event by the Vail International Dance Festival to support the local kids’ dance organizations throughout the area.  Lauren was absolutely thrilled to meet her ballet idol, Tiler Peck and Tiler’s fiance’, Robert Fairchild, the exciting principal dancers of the New York City Ballet.

The next night, we got to see them perform on opening night of the 25th Vail International Dance Festival at the gorgeous outdoor Ford Amphitheatre:

 

The Pacific Northwest Ballet also performed a wonderful rendition of Balanchine’s “Serenade”—so pretty.

Vail village is always a delight to walk around.  My brother gets to walk it daily to the ski shop he manages at the base of the mountain.

On Sunday, we headed up to the Gore range (showing high above the street above), to Piney Lake.  My mom always enjoyed going there, so we thought it would be a fitting place for her to scatter.  It had rained off and on most of the morning, and as luck would have it, when we went to hike out to the lone pine tree at the end of the lake to spread her ashes, it was absolutely pouring rain and obscured the highest peaks surrounding the lake.  It sure didn’t stop the fly fishermen from fishing though!

Karen snapped a pic of my brother and me in front of “Mom’s Tree.”  Thank goodness for Gore-Tex raincoats!

Back at the Lodge, we had lunch and I took a pic of Randy and Karen getting dried off in front of the fireplace.

As we left, the rains paused and clouds parted enough to get a slightly better view of the Gore range behind the lake.

Mom’s tree is lone tree about at my eye-level in the center of the photo below.  Not too shabby a place to return to the earth.

The road coming back down the mountain was pretty muddy, so Randy will have quite a clean-up to do on his old Subaru.  Thank goodness he had a newer, cleaner one waiting in the garage!