Steamboat Ski Weekend

I am taking a break from the diet challenge posts for a quick recap.

These photos are from earlier in January, but it was such a great weekend that I had to post the pics. My coworker sent me an email from a church group in Fort Collins for a weekend ski trip to Steamboat.  It was such a great deal for two days of skiing at Steamboat that we decided to go.  So essentially, we signed up for ski trip with a young adult group with a bunch of people we didn't know from Fort Collins.

You left Friday night and they put you up on the floor of a christian school in Steamboat.  Yes, I said floor.  We were so unsure about how this was going to go, but it ended up being one of the funnest weekends I can remember!

The weather in Steamboat didn't show any snow during the week, but all of a sudden, on Friday my phone told me that Steamboat would get some fresh pow!  We were pretty excited!  

I left work early on Friday and Michael and I drove up to Steamboat early.  We had time to kill before everyone else was supposed to meet at the church (9:30pm), so we stopped for dinner at a Mexican restaurant called "The Cantina."  We proceeded to enjoy a margarita and some chips.  Michael will demonstrate the proper way to drink a margarita, Steamboat style.

They had a burrito on the menu called the "96er" and if you finished it in 45 min.  You got a free t-shirt and I think your meal might have been free.  But it was a 6 lb burrito.  It was so big!  I don't know how anyone could finish it.  Michael wanted to order it and split it, but we didn't know what we would do with the leftovers.

When we got to the school at around 9:30pm, not everyone was there yet.  By the time everyone on their list showed up, it was 11:00pm.  And after they went through the rules we packed lunches and started getting ready for bed.  It was almost 1am before got to try to sleep.  Since we were a married couple, they put us up in one of the classrooms, so we got our own room :-).

We were on breakfast duty the next morning, so we had to be up at 6am.  They had teams and your team was on a designated duty, like cleaning or a meal.  But we finally got to the mountain at 8:30am, ready to ski!

It was so much fun!  We ended up skiing with people from the group, which was nice because after we broke for lunch at 11:30, Michael couldn't ski anymore.  He went and took a break while I stayed on the mountain until 3:15pm.  I haven't skied that long in years!

Saturday night after they cooked us spaghetti and meatballs, they had free admission to the hot springs for us!  After skiing all day, it felt amazing!  I don't have any pictures because I had my swimsuit and couldn't bring my phone into the hot springs area.

After hot springs, we went to grab a drink with some people Mike knows from work.  Thankfully, we only stayed out until 10pm, so we at least got back to the school and in our sleeping bags at 11pm.

Our second day on the mountain was even better.  They had gotten about 5 inches of snow during the night. Michael rented a ski-bike in hopes that his knee didn't hurt.  I want to pause here, ski biking is awesome.  If you have never gone, go do it!!  I skied with him for an hour that morning and my legs were shot, mostly from the day before, but with all that new snow, I was working so hard.  I had to go and rent one too because Michael was having so much fun!

It really is like being on a bike going down the ski hill.  These bikes included little ski blades that you attached to your feet.

Steamboat is such a beautiful spot.

We ski-biked all the way until closing.  Then we hung out at the base with some of the guys from the group who were still left. We met some really interesting and neat people.

What a full weekend though, we didn't end up getting home until 8:30pm and then we both had to be up for work in the morning.  We wouldn't have had it any other way though, it was such a great time.