Avon, Colorado

On Saturday, July 11th, we checked out of the condo in Park City and drove to Avon, Colorado.  The road took us through some country that we had never seen.  It was a nice, but long drive with considerable trauma at the end.  But we'll get to that later.

We made a picnic lunch before we left and stopped in Roosevelt, Utah at a nice park to eat our lunch.  It was so beautiful and peaceful.  Perfect weather; perfect company!

We then drove into Vernal as we wanted to see the temple there.  The tabernacle there has been transformed  into a temple.  It is beautiful!

Flowers on the grounds of temples are always beautiful.

 We had a lowlight when we stopped at a rest area which was just a horrible, filthy outhouse.  I shudder and cringe when I think about it.  For the next hour in the car, I poured hand sanitizer again and again.  We were both surprised at how much of the terrain from Strawberry Reservoir to Rifle, Colorado looked like southern Utah- much more desert-like than anticipated. We enjoyed listening to a book, "Hearts of Resistance" as we traveled. 

We arrived in Avon around 6:30pm and had to go straight to Walmart to do our order pick-up, which included ice cream (important information for later.)  We got to our very nice resort and checked in.  We each filled our arms with groceries, etc, and headed up to our room on the fourth floor.  Imagine the not good surprise when we walked in and found our suite had not been cleaned.  Towels piled everywhere and unmade beds. Ahh.  We called the front desk and they asked us to come to down to sort it out.  So, with our arms filled with groceries and already exhausted from the trip, we went down.  They found us another suite for the night on the 2^nd floor, but said we had to move into our original 4^th floor suite the next day, after it was cleaned.  They apologized that, because of COVID restrictions, they couldn't help us.  Now, that’s bad enough if it’s just your suitcases, etc, but we had a car full of groceries.  Plus, I wanted to sanitize the whole thing before we moved in.  Remember the ice cream?  Well, we did too and got into the freezer only just in time.  I sanitized the whole place (I brought Clorox wipes and spray.)  We were SO tired when we got the final loads in and put away.  It was now nearly 9:00pm.  We drove through the drive- through at Wendy’s, brought the food home, ate, perfunctorily read scriptures, and fell into bed. You’ve heard the expression, “I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.”  Well, I think it happened that night.

We got up the next morning, ate breakfast, showered and got ready, and did our at -condo church.  Then they called and said the fourth floor room was ready.  So we loaded everything up.  And, again, I scrubbed the whole new place, and we got moved in.  I was so grateful to Ken as he unpacked the whole kitchen.  It took a couple of hours to get moved in. He went in to unpack his clothes and I got everything out to make sandwiches for lunch and went to cut a lemon to make the marinade for our barbecue chicken that evening.  The knife slipped and cut my thumb.  It was deep and there was no small amount of blood.  I washed and washed it.  There was a bottle of hand sanitizer there and I poured a bunch in, then went to wash it in the bathroom with soap.  Did I mention there was a lot of blood?   I wrapped it and held my hand in the air while Ken finished the marinade and sandwiches.  He patched me up with Neosporin and band-aids and we had a nice lunch.  By then, we both needed naps.  So began our stay in Avon.  

But things got better from there.  Again, Ken enjoyed morning hikes and I enjoyed the wonderful pool to myself each morning.  Ken joined me when he got back in time.  In the end, we were glad to have the fourth floor room.  It was the highest floor and so the ceilings were vaulted, with high windows, allowing us to see the whole of the mountain.  Following are some pictures from Ken's morning hikes:

Map of trails and ski runs in Beaver Creek.

Colorado state flower: columbine "The columbine were bending their heads in the rain."

Bluebells

This is a large bee that Ken caught in mid-flight

He hiked up to gorgeous Beaver Creek Lake

Golden Mantled Ground Squirrel

Purple penstemon

Fireweed

Green gentian

Lupine

Sego lily- Utah state flower

Doe Mule deer

View of Beaver Creek

Field of lupine

He got up early and was the first on the mountain most mornings.  One morning, he surprised this grizzly bear as she was foraging.  They just looked at each other.  How Ken had the presence of mind to snap a picture, I don't know.  She then took off.  It was then that Ken found out she had a cub as it scampered up a tree.  Thank goodness he didn't get between them. 

Ken's pictures, through google photo, come to my google account. Often it takes days for them to arrive and update.  But for some reason, that day, they updated immediately.  I got on my phone and there is this picture. Ahhhh! I immediately texted, "Run for your life!" 

Canada Jay

The Canada Jay came down and posed for him.

Friendly little Canada Jay up close and personal. He was at Ken's feet.

View of Avon from the mountainside.

A restaurant at the top of the ski lifts

View of the top of the Colorado rockies.

Chickory or Pine Squirrel (I think this was the species that played in our Caldwell yard)

Ken was excited to add the Dusky Grouse to his life list.  Because of the lighting the pictures aren't great, but it was very tame- only about four feet from Ken)

Flax

Female broad-tailed hummingbird

He rode up to Vail, Colorado and took this selfie.

Taken from the deck of our unit.

This was my view as we read, studied.  Pretty fine 😉

              

Inside the condo

Out on the deck of our unit

While we were there, I developed quite a bad sinus infection and eye infection.  I contacted our eye doctor, who is also our bishop, and he sent a prescription for my eye to a local pharmacy.  I was so grateful.  I paid him in cookies when we got home.  On the Monday after we got home, I did a virtual doctor visit with my doctor and got antibiotics for my sinus infection.  Though it didn't spoil our time there, the drive home was a bit grueling for me.  But overall, it was a delightful break from the norm in Avon, Colorado.

Our welcome home sunrise