tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28544779672594128112024-03-12T16:34:25.365-07:00Innkeeping At AltitudeThe blog of the High Mountain Lodge near Winter Park, Colorado. The High Mountain Lodge is a casual, comfortable, and welcoming Bed and Breakfast / Country Inn near Winter Park, Colorado. Visit us on the web at http://www.highmountainlodge.com.Innkeeping At Altitudehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01172783225390652627noreply@blogger.comBlogger45125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2854477967259412811.post-70033899858819295282014-03-04T11:06:00.001-08:002014-03-04T11:10:03.103-08:00Spring SkiingNow that the days are beginning to lengthen and we are sliding toward spring, it's time to think about Spring Break and Spring Skiing.<br />
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No, I'm not talking about the "late season" conditions that involve plowing through a foot of mashed-potato snow. Powder hounds shouldn't despair: March is statistically the snowiest month in Colorado. But that snow frequently gives way to eye-popping blue skies that frame the snow-covered mountains so starkly you'd think God took a black magic marker to outline them.<br />
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Winter Park doesn't close until the third week of April, so you have plenty of time to get in some skiing during what traditionally have been the best conditions of the year.<br />
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And don't forget April--the second snowiest month! Admittedly, people from lower elevations find their thoughts turning toward golf and putting in a garden; in the high country, however, it's still a time for playing in the snow.<br />
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We hope you'll join us before it all starts to melt.<br />
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Innkeeping At Altitudehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01172783225390652627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2854477967259412811.post-48838269177672573702014-01-27T16:36:00.003-08:002014-01-27T16:38:55.797-08:00Snow and Bronco Glory<br />
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YTISQ4Pkkkk/Uub4pkdpLLI/AAAAAAAAAHA/bpfz1Zgk-_M/s1600/broncosbanneradsansclick.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YTISQ4Pkkkk/Uub4pkdpLLI/AAAAAAAAAHA/bpfz1Zgk-_M/s1600/broncosbanneradsansclick.png" height="280" width="640" /></a>I love it when events come together.<br />
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The Broncos win the AFC championship, and it starts to snow in the mountains.<br />
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After over a week of glorious blue-bird skies, but without a flake of snow, we were just praying for the next storm to blow in.<br />
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And, wonder of wonders, just a few days before the Super Bowl, it starts snowing again in the Colorado mountains.<br />
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It's no secret that anybody in the tourist industry in Colorado prays and makes pagan sacrifice that it will snow a blizzard any time the Home Team is on TV.<br />
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And we're just so amused that this Super Bowl is gonna be played in New Jersey. In January.<br />
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Srsly? What was the NFL thinking?<br />
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But it's all good. The national media is emitting Cassandra-like cries about the game-day conditions.<br />
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Our thought: our Broncos are up to the challenge of New Jersey humidity.<br />
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In the meantime, we're looking for the high mountain tailgate party to end all tailgates at the High Mountain Lodge (indoors, of course).<br />
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The new snow that is falling about an inch an hour right now should make for awesome skiing conditions this weekend, and our weekend special should ensure that guests won't have to brave the freeway with tens of thousands of crazed Bronco fans trying to get back down to Denver on Sunday afternoon before kickoff.<br />
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<a href="http://www.highmountainlodge.com/specials.html" target="_blank">Join us for the game:</a>Innkeeping At Altitudehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01172783225390652627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2854477967259412811.post-54859642725044588652013-12-05T20:46:00.000-08:002013-12-05T20:47:52.065-08:00Deep Freeze in the Mountains and thoughts about winterRecently I've been reading a novel set in early December along northern California's Mendocino coast. The setting is a gloomy one, with trees (including giant sequoias) dripping with rain. There is looming fog, dim, diffused light, and the general depressed air of a damp winter.<br />
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Meanwhile, people in a mansion overlooking the ocean are preparing a bright holiday celebration including chamber orchestras, bright oak-log fires, mulled wine and mead, and every sort of festal food. The contrast between the outside gloom and the bright firelight is striking.<br />
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Yesterday at the High Mountain Lodge, a bitter cold spell settled in, and I awoke early this morning before dawn to go over and check the pipes and the heating situation in the guest lodge. I was thinking about that novel. It was dark as pitch. The cold was bone chilling, and the snow that had fallen overnight actually squeaked when I walked on it.<br />
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We are tumbling toward the shortest and darkest day of the year in just a few weeks but aren't even there yet. I anxiously went through all our guest rooms, running hot water down every drain to make sure that the sewer line wouldn't freeze up. I know, I know--other cold places in the country worry about their pipes freezing; up here, we get anxious when the sewer ices up. They have even invented a machine to thaw out a sewer line. It's a cross between a power washer and a roto-rooter. You hook it up to your hot water tank....<br />
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But I digress.<br />
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After checking all the rooms for warmth, and making sure the utility chase between the first and second floor of the lodge was warm, with no icy blasts chilling the pipes, I squeaked my way back to the dining lodge and our owner's quarters, took a shower, and got dressed for the day.<br />
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When I next went outside the sun was up, and it smacked me in the face and dazzled me. The sky was so dark blue it was almost purple, and the snow on the mountains and down in the pasture was so amazingly bright that I thought of a 16th century poet's made-up word, "glistering," a combination of "glistening" and "blistering."<br />
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Of course, the temperature was nine below, but the sunlight was brighter and sharper than the warmest Caribbean beach.<br />
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So much for gloomy northern California contrasts between the indoors and outside. I guess you could call Colorado winters "postmodern" when it comes to the usual traditional and literary ideas of our darker months. A hundred years ago, when Christina Rosetti wrote, "In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan. Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone," she accurately described the condition of the earth and water. But there's nothing bleak about a Colorado winter.<br />
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Yes, we will have crackling fires in the fireplaces at the High Mountain Lodge this winter. Yes, we will have bright celebrations with good food and drink. There may be some overcast days, and the wind can blow like the Big Bad Wolf.<br />
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But outside the Lodge rooms and away from the crackling fires, there is a world of exquisite winter beauty. I hope you are lucky enough to experience it; it would be really cool if you experienced it with us (that's a shameless marketing plug).<br />
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Julie and I hope to see you this not-so-bleak winter.Innkeeping At Altitudehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01172783225390652627noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2854477967259412811.post-72849569378672117022013-11-04T15:00:00.002-08:002013-11-04T15:01:07.217-08:00Early Snows Promise Good Early Skiing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Don't let her "Poor Little Match Girl" look distract you. Murphy, the Lodge Dog, loves her some snow.</i></span></div>
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It started snowing for real up at the High Mountain Lodge in October. We have had five significant snowstorm<span style="font-size: small;"> (more than</span> 6 inches) since then.<br />
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All indications point toward an amazing early ski season for Winter Park.<br />
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Generally, this time of year, skiers can expect--at best--one or perhaps two runs of man-made snow at the resort. However, if the trend we experienced in October continues (always a gamble), we may have some pretty decent skiing by Opening Day in just a couple of weeks. <br />
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And there's nothing to suggest that skiers and snowboarders who choose to upgrade that classic winter song to "I'm dreaming of a White Thanksgiving" will be disappointed.<br />
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Come join us for some early-season snow sports, and plan to spend Thanksgiving with us. Julie is making a traditional feast with all the trimmings (thank God for the three ovens in the High Mountain Lodge's kitchen). Details on our website.Innkeeping At Altitudehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01172783225390652627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2854477967259412811.post-7098208982319881502013-10-12T14:43:00.000-07:002013-10-12T14:43:19.922-07:00Blockbuster® circa 1995 is alive and well at the High Mountain Lodge<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When Julie and I bought the High Mountain Lodge over four years ago, we went through the usual negotiations with the seller about what was going to be left with the property, and what the seller wanted to retain.<br />
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One of the most amusing contingencies in the contract was that the seller wanted to retain possession of the library of video tapes that, at the time, were on shelves in the Lodge's office. When our real estate agents mentioned that contingency, I almost fell over laughing. "You're kidding, right? Who wants a bunch of VHS tapes? They don't even make VCRs any more!" <br />
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Well, evidently, the seller came to his senses; when we took possession of the Lodge, there they were, in all their paleolithic glory, still on the shelves. The seller never exercised that particular contingency.<br />
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In the years since we bought the Lodge, as our friends' and relatives' VCRs bit the dust, we have been the recipients of their video libraries. Our unwelcome collection of VHS tapes has tripled in size since the seller abandoned his original collection, and the tapes have been collecting dust in boxes in just about every room of our living quarters since we didn't have any more space in the office to shelve them with the original collection.<br />
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Just this past month, since the government shutdown and the consequent closure of Rocky Mountain National Park left us without our usual compliment of guests coming up to the high country to ooh and aah at the changing color of the aspens, we set about accomplishing a project that had been hanging fire for at least a year.<br />
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We built a series of shelves at the end of our rec room designed for videos. For three days, now, we have been carting over boxes of tapes and arranging them on the shelves. The shelves cover the entire back wall of the rec room, and already, we're wondering if we need more room to house them all.<br />
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Lest you think we're complete Luddites, there is also a rather good selection of DVDs, as well.<br />
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When you visit us, feel free to indulge yourself in a marathon of trashy movies from the 80s and 90s. But please don't feel obligated to bring your old videos with you. Our shelves are full.Innkeeping At Altitudehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01172783225390652627noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2854477967259412811.post-81154059577086905822013-08-20T16:33:00.004-07:002013-08-20T16:33:53.482-07:00The Raspberry Month<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Recently we got a Facebook invitation from a new friend in the Fraser Valley who invited us to her secret raspberry hunting grounds. <br />
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Like Italian truffle hunters who take circuitous routes to disguise the location of their favorite spots, denizens of the Fraser Valley take their raspberries seriously. <br />
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Luckily for us, our secret raspberry patch is just below the dining room windows, and I have been watching it in the last few warmer days bloom with pecks--if not bushels--of ripe raspberries.<br />
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The plan is to include our own raspberries in the fruit we serve at breakfast at the Lodge for the rest of August and into September. Additionally, I hope to put up some jars of raspberry jam that we will serve to our guests this winter when snow drifts out of the west completely overwhelm the raspberry canes.<br />
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Our berries are smaller than the mutant giants we get at the grocery store, but they are oh-so-sweet. Be the envy of all your friends and come visit us during Raspberry Month.Innkeeping At Altitudehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01172783225390652627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2854477967259412811.post-28259182706194745832013-05-11T17:51:00.000-07:002013-05-11T18:36:26.554-07:00They don't call it "mud season" for nothin'<br />
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When T.S. Eliot observed that "April is the cruelest month," it was clear that the man from Missouri who bugged out to Britain had never been to the Colorado high country in the month of May.<br />
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Since Winter Park Ski Resort closed on April 21, we have had three (count 'em) blizzards that each dropped between six and twelve inches of snow on us.<br />
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Two days later, the snow was gone, the sky blue, the sun warm, and newcomers were left shaking their heads. "What was hell was that all about?"<br />
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I hung out two loads of laundry this afternoon to dry in the wind-whipped sunshine, and I got the last sheets off the line just as a rain squall raced over Sheep Mountain like sleet-frozen Valkÿries in a bad production of Wagner. That rain turned into a short-lived horizontal snow squall that has since been replaced by the most marvelous warm sunshine. I'm not holding my breath that it will stick around, even until sundown. There are still some evil-looking clouds Over Yonder.<br />
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Our neighbors across the road, students at a Bible School, have had the power washer and the shop vac out all day trying to get their cars cleaned up for spring. Silly children. Even prayer isn't gonna keep the dirt roads--mud roads this time of the year--from soiling the spit-polish shine on their vehicles.<br />
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Actually, having a clean vehicle in Grand County this time of the year is a sign that "you ain't from around here." Locals keep a suspicious eye on people driving clean cars, hoping the drivers won't snap and turn homicidal when denied visions of fields of columbine waving in the breeze (that happens in July). <br />
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Last week, before we drove down to Denver for a celebration of an anniversary, I filled the gas tank and spent eleven dollars for an "ultimate" car wash at the gas station. "Why are you spending so much money?" Julie wondered.<br />
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"Well, if we're stopped for a traffic offense and CHP notices that our license plate is obscured by mud, I don't want to get shot before we can explain that we're not felons fleeing justice. Besides, we're going to Denver, and I don't want people to think ill of us because we have a dirty car."<br />
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Julie snorted. "The way you drive, it doesn't take a muddy car for you to get flipped off in Denver traffic."<br />
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"I'm out of practice driving in the city," I whined. "I couldn't help that I was looking at the snow on the Continental Divide last week and that truck had to drive into the ditch."<br />
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"Lucky the sheriff hasn't been around."<br />
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"Something to be said for a muddy license plate."<br />
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Innkeeping At Altitudehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01172783225390652627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2854477967259412811.post-2719333236308166512013-02-19T09:42:00.001-08:002013-02-19T09:42:45.446-08:00Thoughts in Mid-WinterYes, I know, it's just a little more than a month until spring. This high in the mountains, however, winter is notorious for holding on with gritted teeth until well into spring and sometimes almost into summer. It's not unusual up here to have the new-blooming Pasque Flowers to get covered in several inches of snow. Silly vegetation.<br />
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Besides, the marmot saw his shadow at Winter Park on February 2, so that means two more months of winter--never mind what happens with that fat sleepy woodchuck in Pennsylvania.<br />
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So it's still midwinter here at the High Mountain Lodge, and what a wonderful winter it's turning out to be. After some spectacular snow around Christmas, the weather pattern shifted, and we were left high and pretty dry during January.<br />
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But all that changed when February rolled around. We have been getting modest snow storms every few days, which is keeping the terrain soft at Winter Park Ski Area and the edges of our skis from getting dull.<br />
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With the predictable snow falls, weekends have been filling up here at the High Mountain Lodge with last-minute skiers from the Front Range. And we are getting a lot of bookings from further-flung areas as well. And all our guests are getting to see Colorado at its finest. Today, the sky is an eye-popping blue, and the sun is shining on newly-fallen snow. The peaks are white and starkly outlined against the impossibly blue sky. The air is crisp and cold, but we'll be warm enough once we get to the area and begin carving turns.<br />
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We hope you can join us this year.Innkeeping At Altitudehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01172783225390652627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2854477967259412811.post-85587771844786769222012-10-26T16:17:00.001-07:002012-10-26T16:17:42.244-07:00Naming our RoomsSince we have been open, people have occasionally asked us about the eccentric numbering convention for our rooms. They're numeric, but we've left some numbers out. Currently, you can book rooms 1, 5, 7-10, 12-14.<br />
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The convention was something we inherited when we bought the place. And we are slowly working to distinguish our rooms with more than a numeral. And the numbers not shown are "out of service."<br />
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People have been telling us since we opened that we need to "name" our rooms in order to distinguish them in the minds of prospective guests. Early on, we added "<a href="http://www.highmountainlodge.com/rooms.html#9" target="_blank">Valley View Suite</a>" to the name of Room 9, our very best room, because it was a 2-room suite and, well, it overlooked our valley. It has a lot of furniture that came out of our house from before we bought the High Mountain Lodge, including a Chinese carpet that we bought when Julie was pregnant and we went out to buy a rocking chair for the baby but came back with an oriental rug, instead. (Over the years, we've worked through our ADD issues.) There are also some nice Chinese prints in the bedroom. The name "Valley View Suite" probably isn't the most spectacular example of marketing positioning and branding ever conceived, but it has served to distinguish that particular room with many of our returning guests.<br />
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Similarly, we named the suite across the hall the "Atrium Suite" because it overlooked our enclosed pool atrium. On our website, we tell people that, in the summertime, it's just dark, because it has no view. In the wintertime, it's very popular because by the time people get back from skiing, it's dark anyway. It's also less expensive than the Valley View Suite, and that works for some folks, too. Another of our housekeepers, standing on the balcony of the <a href="http://www.highmountainlodge.com/rooms.html#10" target="_blank">Atrium Suite</a> (yes, it has a balcony overlooking the pool), asked me one time, "Dude! Whaddaya do to keep folks from jumping from here into the pool, 'cause this could be the sickest most awesome plunge?!" I replied, "We fire any of our employees who suggest that to our guests." That seemed to work, though I briefly considered having a couple of brass plates engraved and affixed to the railing that would proclaim, "DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT."<br />
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We have toyed with naming <a href="http://www.highmountainlodge.com/rooms.html#12" target="_blank">Room 12 "the Duck Room.</a>" When an interior-designer friend "staged" it right before we opened in 2009, she found duck and waterfowl art and objects all over the lodge and concentrated them in that room. The effect really is lovely. Then my wife, Julie, and her sister found a set of brass fireplace tools with duck heads on them at an antique shop, and they bought them to "complete" the room. Our housekeeper at the time, however, freaked out when he saw it, and termed the whole room "creepy." We eventually persuaded him to clean the room, in spite of his fear of the fireplace tools, but we have held off naming the room because we realize that some people don't like birds. Indeed, one set of guests actually put a towel on top of the mallard duck decoy in the corner of the room because, they told us when they were checking out, "It looked at us when we were sleeping." This begs the question of how people know that something is looking at them when they are unconscious, but I just smiled and swiped their credit card. Moral of the story: if you don't like birds, Room 12 may not be your best choice when staying at the High Mountain Lodge.<br />
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We have considered naming <a href="http://www.highmountainlodge.com/rooms.html#13" target="_blank">Room 13 "The Train Room."</a> It has an amazing collection of train art from the early days of transportation in the Winter Park/Fraser area. And train buff friends have given us additional train memorabilia for the room. The press of other demanding projects have kept us from renaming it--that and sheer laziness. Because, if we have that many "named" rooms, what are we going to call the rest of the rooms? The Blue Room? The Indian Rug Room? Chalk it all up to a failure of imagination.<br />
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I have made a commitment to myself and to my wife that I will get "Room 3" in service before ski season. Room 3 is on the lower level of the lodge. When we bought the place, it was "being renovated." That renovation languished until now. We have installed a pedestal sink in the bathroom, stained and finished the wainscoting. Tomorrow, I'm painting the walls and frantically searching for a sound-proofing solution for the ceiling.<br />
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Room 3 has a fireplace and will have a king-sized bed. It interconnects with The Library (Room 4). The Library is generally a public room. The furniture consists of comfortable chairs, a recliner, a sofa-bed, and a game table, surrounded by books, both popular and academic. It also has a fireplace. When Room 3 and Room 4 are rented together, we will call it "The Library Suite." It will be an amazing, comfortable space for a family. The Library has a half bath, which means less trooping through the bedroom for potty breaks in the middle of the night--that is, if Tom can get the toilet to stop leaking....<br />
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We're looking forward to adding a new, "named" room to the offerings at the High Mountain Lodge. We hope you'll come visit us and check it out!Innkeeping At Altitudehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01172783225390652627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2854477967259412811.post-85254528852967395532012-10-13T13:22:00.000-07:002012-10-13T13:22:16.070-07:00First Snow of the Season!I wouldn't exactly call it a "storm." It's been gently snowing on and off all day. No accumulation to speak of, but a lot of moisture has been soaking into our very thirsty ground.<br />
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I took the dogs for "walkies" earlier today. You would think that, with all the acreage we have around the High Mountain Lodge that the dogs could explore the place on their own, but noooo, they insist that we take them. You would think they'd been shut up in an urban apartment all day the way they go nuts when we put on outdoor boots--instead of being in the country in doggie paradise.<br />
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But anyway, walking along country roads and in the pasture in the snow was a delightful experience. The aspen leaves have all fallen, and you can smell the leaf mold on the wet ground. A Dan Fogleberg song from my adolescence begins, "The end of October, / the sleepy brown woods seem to / bow down their heads to the winter." That's sort of what it feels like today.<br />
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We're really slow right now, though reservations are starting to pile up for the winter ski season, as well as Thanksgiving. Winter Park opens on November 14. In the meantime, we are participating in a Professional Association of Innkeepers offering of two free nights to active military and veterans over the Veterans Day weekend. We filled up within 48 hours of posting the offering, and have a respectable wait list, as well.<br />
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Some friends whom I used to play in a bar-band with are coming up to provide entertainment for the weekend. Should be an awesome time.<br />
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While the summer activities are winding down and the winter ones have yet to gear up, there is plenty still to do in the mountains in the fall. Hikes, bike rides, fishing, golf. Shoot, all the merchants are having sales getting read to flop their inventory for the winter.<br />
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Good times in the mountains. Come visit.Innkeeping At Altitudehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01172783225390652627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2854477967259412811.post-48118060609405261972012-09-28T16:22:00.000-07:002012-09-28T16:22:21.827-07:00Fall is the Best Time of YearThe crush of summer guests has moderated now that it's almost October, but the work is no less intense. We are looking for a new housekeeper; anybody want a <a href="http://www.highmountainlodge.com/jobs.html">job</a>?<br />
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The aspen color is past its peak now, but there's still a lot of beauty to be seen. Just this morning during breakfast, I looked out the dining room windows to the west, and light from the rising sun hitting the trees on the far side of the road made the leaves positively glow. Annie Dillard, in her spectacular book, <i>Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,</i> wrote a chapter on "the tree with the lights in it." I read it in college; in spite of her splendid prose, I didn't understand what she meant until I moved to Colorado and saw the aspens.<br />
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It's as if the sunshine hitting the leaves all summer was somehow sequestered in them. Now that the chlorophyll has faded, the slightest bit of light hitting them makes them explode with color.<br />
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It's quiet at the High Mountain Lodge right now. Instead of ten or more couples on a weekend, we have two or three. This makes for a lot of cooking fun. Just this morning, I made herb scrambled eggs stuffed in popovers and roasted asparagus with lime-chipotle hollandaise because one of the couples staying with us were repeat guests who had had that dish before and specifically requested it. I was happy to oblige. We don't have the staff to accommodate table service if we have more than six or eight people staying with us, so it's nice to be able to cook for just a few people.<br />
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If there is one thing that doesn't change with the seasons at the High Mountain Lodge, it's the quiet. We have little traffic noise regardless of the season, but in fall, it seems as if the peace just doubles down. We're far enough from the train tracks that on the rare occasion when we here the train horn, it sounds romantic instead of something that "makes you want to stick an ice pick in your ear"--as a Trip Advisor review of one of our competitors--who have the train tracks running virtually through their back yard--noted.<br />
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This is a quiet and peaceful time. There's not much going on. It's a perfect time for hiking in the Indian Peaks Wilderness and Rocky Mountain National Park, for fishing in the Fraser and Colorado Rivers, for horseback riding, for a last few rounds of golf on fairways surrounded by snow-dusted peaks. The winter ski season is a few months away (please, God, send us good snow!)<br />
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Lots of "locals" leave town for a quick vacation before the ski season gets busy.We prefer to stick around. We're getting additional rooms ready for winter, as well as fixing the hot tub (yet again!). But it's all good.<br />
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Come visit us during this magical season. Innkeeping At Altitudehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01172783225390652627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2854477967259412811.post-28218259647449723392012-09-03T20:45:00.002-07:002012-09-03T20:46:06.143-07:00Fall Color<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Golly, has it been a year since my last blog post? Uh, I guess so. Only excuse: we've been busy!<br />
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After a disappointingly snowless winter and a very dry spring, mid-summer saw the weather turn around and the pasture green up quite nicely. In spite of the "bad" weather, we have enjoyed a flood of wonderful people to the High Mountain Lodge recently.<br />
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We also had an amazing summer for hummingbirds. The little guys went through a fifty-pound bag of COSTCO sugar in July and August, alone:<br />
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Improvements to the High Mountain Lodge include a pergola on the upper deck, replacement of the deteriorating deck railings, and the renovation of another room at the Lodge.<br />
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But that's beside the point. The aspen are turning early this year, and we want to see some friends visit us.<br />
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Of course, if the early aspens are any indication, then we're expecting an epic winter. Make your reservations soon.Innkeeping At Altitudehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01172783225390652627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2854477967259412811.post-1766731857475243942011-08-10T08:07:00.000-07:002011-08-10T08:07:21.347-07:00Murphy & the BearThe Navajo have a name for wintertime when they perform their ceremonials: “The Season When the Thunder Sleeps.”<div><br />
</div><div>With that in mind, I’ve decided to name summertime “The Season When Tom and Julie Don’t Sleep.”</div><div><br />
</div><div>For the past few weeks, we have been plagued by a bear trying to get into our dumpster in the middle of the night. Ever vigilant, Murphy the Lodgedog nightly has been pitching six fits at about three in the morning when the critter starts to rattle the dumpster. </div><div><br />
</div><div>This is a smaller and younger bear than <a href="http://www.necn.com/Boston/Nation/2009/09/06/Black-bear-breaks-into/1252233864.html">the one the size of an Escalade</a> that got into our neighboring lodge a couple of summers ago, broke into their walk-in freezer, and ate all their ice cream.</div><div><br />
</div><div>But though young, he’s already gotten in trouble before. About a week ago, Murphy started barking, roused us out of sleep, and I shambled down to the storeroom to turn on the outside light to see what the matter was. Julie shouted down from the balcony, “Tom! Don’t open the door! There’s a bear out there!” So naturally, I opened to door, and sure enough there was a bear on the other side of the road from the dumpster. He boasted a white ear-tag: a sure sign that the Division of Wildlife had already had at least one run-in with him.</div><div><br />
</div><div>I was so mad at being awakened in the middle of the night that I stood there in bare feet and boxer shorts, waved my arms and shouted, “Get outta here! Go on! Git!”</div><div><br />
</div><div>The bear looked surprised, said, “Whoaaa?” and ran up the mountain.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Murphy was beside herself. She literally could not stop barking, and for the rest of the night, the slightest noise would set her off. </div><div><br />
</div><div>It has been like that every night since. We haven’t been this sleep-deprived since our son was a collicky infant and I briefly considered drowning him in the bathtub.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Just last night, Murphy went off again. We didn’t see the bear this time, and I briefly wondered if it might be our neighborhood evil raccoon, but this morning the dumpster had been moved, so it was clear that the bear had been back. </div><div><br />
</div><div>Since we seem unable to convince Murphy to be a less-ambitious watchdog, it’s time to start filling balloons with a dilute ammonia solution and putting them on the lid of the dumpster. Bears, whose sense of smell is tremendous--even better than that of dogs--do not like the smell of ammonia, so perhaps if our bear gets a whiff of the stuff, he’ll leave us alone.</div><div><br />
</div><div>If not, just about the time it becomes The Season When the Thunder Sleeps and the bear goes into hibernation, it will also be The Season When Tom and Julie Sleep, as well.</div>Innkeeping At Altitudehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01172783225390652627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2854477967259412811.post-57939464750274317992011-06-29T22:12:00.000-07:002011-06-29T22:12:37.098-07:00RainSome of my earliest childhood memories are of smelling the moisture in the air after a rainstorm.<br />
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I grew up in the Oklahoma panhandle, where rainstorms were few and far between. However, most years around about the 4th of July, we would be treated to spectacular downpours, the product of cumulus clouds that would build and roil and form and churn about in the air above the high plains, then release torrents of water from the bottom of anvil-shaped monster-clouds, as well as not a little bit of hail, and occasionally a tornado or two.<br />
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But I always welcomed the rain--since I didn't have to worry about the hail denting the car or the tornado sucking the house away to Oz and perhaps, if you were lucky, dropping it on a politician: that's why God made fathers: to work to earn money to pay for the insurance.<br />
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The July storms were usually the first rain we'd had since spring, when after a dry winter we'd have maybe a week or two of gentle rains, and everybody would hurry out to Elmhurst Cemetery to harvest the asparagus that was frantically erupting from around every tombstone. My wife has similar stories of harvesting spring asparagus from the irrigation ditches on the farm in Boulder County, Colorado, where she kept her horse. Town boy that I was, I had no clue that you could find asparagus growing on the sides of irrigation ditches, but I learned early on that you could always find a healthy crop of it at the Beasley mausoleum after the first rain.<br />
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A few times, I was lucky enough to be on the edge of town after a rainstorm and find myself buffeted by the wind blowing the moist pollen from the fields of wheat that stretched away to the horizon. I'd go home later and find myself covered with the stuff; my t-shirt would never be the same again. But while standing at the edge of the dampened fields, I only cared for the smell of the wheat, driven by the still-moist breeze.<br />
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The smell of wet wheat is almost indescribable. For a boy growing up in the proverbial center of the Dust Bowl, I can only say that it smelled like "life."<br />
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Of course, I was born long after the Dust Bowl, but I remember my mother cursing and crying when the wind blew, telling the stories of her mother making her and her sisters lie on a bed with a wet sheet over them so they wouldn't breathe in the powder-fine dust and develop pneumonia from it.<br />
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Some of her anxiety undoubtedly rubbed off on me, but even in the early 60s when I was a child, it didn't take much for me to develop an appreciation for the blessings of rain.<br />
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You would think, given my childhood, that I would have fled to a humid climate and never looked back. In college in a damp climate, however, I discovered some of the unsavory things that moisture can do to skin, so it didn't take much to convince me that rain, like so many other blessings, is best enjoyed in moderation.<br />
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My godmother, a panhandle girl, followed her husband to a job outside of Charleston, South Carolina. True to her upbringing, she made him string a clothesline between a gum tree and a live oak growing in their back yard, then proceeded to set up housekeeping, hanging the sheets out to dry. Well, they didn't dry; instead, they developed grayish-green stains that spread exactly like mold on a petri dish.<br />
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So she made her husband go into Sears and buy her a dryer. Years later when she told me that story, I could tell that she was ashamed of the fact that she couldn't dry her laundry outside. She never made her peace with the South. It irked her that the alternative to drying her towels in a machine was having mold turn them into gelatinous goo and that, if you were going to dry your sheets outside, you had to put so much Clorox in the water to kill the mold that if you perspired on the sheets during the night, you would wake up in the morning with little white bleached lines on your skin corresponding to the wrinkles in the cloth.<br />
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But I digress.<br />
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This post is really about the smell of nature after rain. Up here at the High Mountain Lodge, we don't have wheat, but we have acres and acres of pine trees. After a few clear days, the sun has toasted the pine pollen so that, when it rains, the air smells like tincture of Colorado. Of course, the rain will also precipitate the pine pollen out of the air and make yellow streaks all over your car.<br />
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You should feel privileged. For a few days, at least, your car will look like a local's.<br />
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Come visit us soon, and smell the air.Innkeeping At Altitudehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01172783225390652627noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2854477967259412811.post-22480454120103528102011-06-27T12:27:00.000-07:002011-06-27T12:45:28.160-07:00THE DECKIsn't it "interesting" how seemingly simple projects can balloon into titanic time-sucks? When we bought the Lodge two years ago, high on our list of "deferred maintenance" issues, we realized we were going to have to address the problem of deteriorating planks in the multi-tiered deck that is the focus of so much of our outdoor hospitality in the summertime.<br />
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Alas! A more than 200% of normal snowfall last winter and the persistent snow we had during "mud season" in May caused us to postpone the project a little longer: according to a neighbor who tracks such things, we got over 400 inches of snow at the High Mountain Lodge this past winter, so we were weeks late in beginning the deck repairs.<br />
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In addition, when we began pulling up rotting planks, we discovered that the seemingly sound planks next to them were also deteriorating rapidly. Long story short: we are completely replacing the middle tier of the deck with a "composite" material (think recycled plastic soda bottles mixed with sawdust then dyed brown).<br />
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A simple weekend project has expanded into a major construction effort, all done while we've been welcoming guests who arrive with a mixed look of indulgence, concern, and alarm. We've been apologetic, and so far I'm managing to suppress the eye-tic that develops every time I have to go into explanation mode.<br />
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The good news: the deck will be finished before the holiday weekend (or else I will be hospitalized somewhere and receiving powerful anti-psychotic medication).<br />
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Also good news: the weather up here has been spectacular. Our daytime highs are in the mid-70s, with lows dipping into the 40s. Guests from Denver (where it has been in the 90s) can only rave about our perfect weather.<br />
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So come on up and enjoy the gentle Colorado breezes while sipping a drink on our brand-new deck. You won't regret the visit!Innkeeping At Altitudehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01172783225390652627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2854477967259412811.post-83228944180548883082011-06-21T18:04:00.000-07:002011-06-21T18:04:12.058-07:00GreenThere is a green that is greener than green, and that green is yellow.<br />
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About three weeks ago, around the first of June, in one day we watched the pasture turn green. There were still patches of snow, but the sun was (finally!) warm, and over the course of just a few hours, green stuff sprang to life amid the brown and gray straw of the dead grasses and weeds. In the days that followed, the pasture just got greener, until you didn't think the color could possibly become more saturated.<br />
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Then the dandelions started to bloom. Just when you didn't think it could get any more green, the bright yellow deepened the color. Right now, the pasture looks like God threw a staggering quantity of gold dust onto a carpet of emeralds.<br />
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The aspens also have leafed out. They bring their own quality of green to the mix. They start out almost yellow when the leaf buds burst open, but as they drink in the sunshine, their color darkens. Years ago, I went on a backpacking trip down in the San Juans in late June, and we walked through a spectacular aspen forest that reminded me of JRR Tolkein's description of elven woods in <i>The Lord of the Rings.</i><br />
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Even the willows have given up their early-spring orange hope. And as the sun goes down, the manes and tails of the horses grazing down there are back-lit and seem to be made of silver.<br />
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Lordy! Living up here is turning me into a romantic. Wordsworth would have loved it up here; so would his wife, Dorothy. We don't have the drop-dead views of the Continental Divide and the Indian Peaks (you have to walk to the other side of the pasture to enjoy that spectacular view), but Sheep Mountain to the west, while less dramatic, is no less beautiful. We are learning to love the shadows and highlights the sun makes in its various declivities.<br />
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To the end of my days, I will always associate the color green with quiet. Not necessarily silence, mind you. Right now, between the wind (more that a Wordsworthian "gentle breeze", the ceaseless buzz of the hummingbirds, and the swallows quarreling and copulating under the eves, the place is hardly silent. But it's still quiet with the best sort of quiet.Innkeeping At Altitudehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01172783225390652627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2854477967259412811.post-70142173117554378592011-04-13T19:05:00.000-07:002011-04-13T19:05:26.902-07:00Snow<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TDZ5j-13N3g/TaZEJ8rLqII/AAAAAAAAAD4/fu-TT5y2-VA/s1600/DSC_0029.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TDZ5j-13N3g/TaZEJ8rLqII/AAAAAAAAAD4/fu-TT5y2-VA/s320/DSC_0029.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
My last blog post was on the first of December, and it was about snow.<br />
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Surprise, here it is the middle of April, and this blog post is about.... snow.<br />
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There are two additional blog posts in draft that I never finished or published: a December post entitled, "Skiing in the Silence of Powder" and a January post, "The January Blizzard of 2011."<br />
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Lest you suspect that by now I'm in the terminal stages of Cabin Fever and about about to turn into an ax murderer, I'll let you in on a little secret: I love snow.<br />
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Even this late in the season, there's nothing about snow up here that will cause me to run screaming from the building screaming, "No! No! Dammit!" the way I did one time after coming out of a late-afternoon graduate seminar at CU-Boulder when it started to snow in May. Up here, we know what to do with snow: we play in it.<br />
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We are not officially in mud season up here at the High Mountain Lodge. That doesn't happen until Easter Monday, the day after Winter Park closes. But that doesn't mean we haven't had a lot of mud already. And the lovely snow we're having right now just means that it will cover the mud with an even layer of white. For a day or two. Of course, this snow means that the mud will just be that much deeper when all that melting moisture mixes with the dirt, but up here, we're into immediate gratification, so like Scarlett O'Hara, we'll "think about that tomorrah."<br />
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This has been a spectacular winter for snow up here. While Denver was basking in a drought-stricken perpetual autumn, we have been blessed with wave after wave of moisture from the west that has smacked into the continental divide and given up the ghost in the form of snow in our valleys.<br />
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The other day, we went over to check on the horses. It was a bright, sunny day, and it didn't even occur to us to wear snowshoes until I sank into the snow to above my knees. And for me, that's saying something.<br />
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I'm Facebooking, e-mailing, and texting all my friends: come on up! Winter ain't over yet.<br />
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It's incredibly peaceful at the Lodge right now. About the only sound I hear when I cross from one building to the other is the crunch of my boots in the snow and the tinnitus in my ears. We're muddling about doing a lot of catch-up right now from the full house we had at Thanksgiving.<br />
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Reservations are sparse until the week before Christmas, when we will be jumping. However, between now and then, we expect reservations to pick up, courtesy of an incredible deal being offered by Winter Park: a two-night stay will net guests two free lift tickets at the area, and steep discounts for additional lift tickets. I expect that we will be getting a lot of last-minute reservations. Just remember: mid-week is the best time to ski, if you can play hooky from work.<br />
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The snow right now will make it worthwhile. Last year at this time, we were still seeing dead grass peeping through the snow in the pasture; not this year. The snow's already deep enough to hide virtually all the vegetation--though the horses dig down to it quite happily.<br />
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Last night when I was driving back to the Lodge from Denver at 10 p.m., the wind was whipping up snow as I drove over Berthoud Pass. But my headlights illuminated the snow-covered evergreens rising on either side of the road. Because of the darkness, they looked almost two-dimensional: a painted backdrop for a stage play about the perfect Colorado vacation.<br />
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Or the perfect place to live. It was good to get home. And I didn't even mind shoveling off the decks this morning.Innkeeping At Altitudehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01172783225390652627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2854477967259412811.post-21100061840332506962010-11-18T17:18:00.000-08:002010-11-18T17:19:01.565-08:00Horizontal Snow<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_1Aq2RFRqjj8/TOXMAocr8nI/AAAAAAAAADo/iiDxLuHt2I0/s1600/DSC_0041.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_1Aq2RFRqjj8/TOXMAocr8nI/AAAAAAAAADo/iiDxLuHt2I0/s400/DSC_0041.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Looking west from the High Mountain Lodge toward Sheep Mountain</td></tr>
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When you live as high in the mountains as we do, directional dimensions can be a little confusing. Instead of the mountains being "up there," they are "over there"--directly in front of you. Clouds, too, don't seem so far up in the air as much as they appear to be in the next valley over, hiding behind a mountain, then drizzling down one of the valleys into the next lower drainage.<br />
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Why, even the stars scarcely know their place. True, the Milky Way still stretches across the heavens high enough that you have to look up to spot it in the inky-dark sky over the Lodge.<br />
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Nevertheless, it's pretty disconcerting to look out the window on a wakeful warm June night just before dawn to spot the Big Dipper upside-down on the horizon balancing on the line of the mountains, as if God had taken a drink, then upended the ladle in the dish drainer to dry out.<br />
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Up here, it's easy to believe the world really is flat and that the firmament truly is a bowl with holes in it to let through the light of the Empyrean in the form of the stars.<br />
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Consequently, we weren't all that surprised to wake up late last week to a snowstorm that had to come from a 360-degree torus of clouds encircling the Lodge. That was the only place the snow could be coming from: The sky above us was achingly blue and cloudless, but snow was drifting down quite steadily. It had to be coming from the horizontal clouds. No wind to speak of, but that snow didn't fool us; it was coming from "over there."<br />
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In successive days the weather got organized, and the clouds covered the whole sky. We had four successive days of pretty much non-stop snow. For the most part, the fall was gentle, though we had a few times when the wind kicked up. But over the course of those days, we got almost two feet of snow.<br />
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We bought our Winter Park ski passes last week when it was snowing, and one of the people waiting in line exclaimed that it was going to be the best Opening Day in many years. We couldn't wait! We skied the last day of the season in April, and we were going to ski the very next day that the lifts were open. Hoo-rah!<br />
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Alas, it was not to be. I had a choir rehearsal in Denver Tuesday evening, and Julie and I went down that morning to work on cleaning our old house and getting it ready to sell. It was balmy and warm (relatively) in Denver, but in mid-afternoon, Julie got a call from somebody wanting to spend the night at the Lodge because CDOT had closed Berthoud Pass and I-70 west of Denver.<br />
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So we spent the night with friends, and by the time we got back to the Lodge the next day, it was mid-afternoon. And today we spent time getting ready for guests this weekend. But even with the disappointment of not making Opening Day, there was some consolation in the sunset we experienced that night after the snow had cleared. You can't grumble too hard.<br />
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So we have yet to get our ski-legs under us. We are, however, within days of hitting the slopes. The next time the clouds band around the Lodge, we'll know to start sharpening those ski edges. It's only a matter of time.Innkeeping At Altitudehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01172783225390652627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2854477967259412811.post-29134062571774689722010-11-08T20:08:00.000-08:002010-11-08T20:08:46.656-08:00Thank you, soldiers and veterans<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_1Aq2RFRqjj8/TNjDybYE4jI/AAAAAAAAADk/kGOQAwks5_0/s1600/veteransdayadsansclick.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_1Aq2RFRqjj8/TNjDybYE4jI/AAAAAAAAADk/kGOQAwks5_0/s320/veteransdayadsansclick.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div>Well, we're almost to November 10. If the weather holds, we expect a lodge-full of active military personnel and veterans for Veterans Day. The weather forecast is for snow, and we've already had a few cancellations, but even so, we're going to have a lot of wonderful people visiting the High Mountain Lodge.<br />
<br />
Last week, the pool boiler went the way of all flesh, and we wrestled the installation of a new one with the help of friends. We left it firing merrily when we went off to a B&B conference in Colorado Springs, and if we're lucky, when we get back to the lodge, it will have successfully raised the pool temp above the temperature of a November Colorado mountain stream. It will be just in time for soldiers, vets, and their families to enjoy.<br />
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It's hard to find another group of people who have made such personal sacrifices for our country. We're honored to welcome them to the lodge and hope to thank them personally when they arrive.Innkeeping At Altitudehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01172783225390652627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2854477967259412811.post-3659301320359586522010-10-22T20:08:00.000-07:002010-10-22T20:08:24.981-07:00Unexpected Beauty<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_1Aq2RFRqjj8/TMITlcJ3RlI/AAAAAAAAADg/yd1ukD2yEpA/s1600/rainysheepmountain.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="424" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_1Aq2RFRqjj8/TMITlcJ3RlI/AAAAAAAAADg/yd1ukD2yEpA/s640/rainysheepmountain.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br />
It was not a dark and stormy night but a damp and chilly afternoon at the High Mountain Lodge. Who knew that the sun, obliterated by the clouds, still had enough gumption to turn the brown, dead fields into gold this afternoon....<br />
<br />
Frequently it gets so staggeringly beautiful up here that you wonder if the Chamber of Commerce has a contract with some hideously expensive Hollywood special-effects company--as if the <a href="http://www.playwinterpark.com/">Winter Park/Fraser Valley C of C</a> had enough money to conspire with the Big Boys to turn the valley spectacular at any season--including our current slow time....<br />
<br />
Not that the Big Boys could pull this one off. They don't have enough imagination.<br />
<br />
We live in a place where nature's gestures are overly large and embarrassingly dramatic. The clouds that in any other place would soar overhead, unreachable, here drizzle down the valleys like spilled buttermilk looking for a low place to sour the floorboards in the kitchen.<br />
<br />
And, if the sights don't sock you in the eye, the smells in our valley would put a Paris perfumery to shame. Fallen wet aspen leaves have an indescribable dark aphrodisiacal musk to them. It doesn't take much for them to rot and become soil, but in the magical few weeks after they've given up dazzling our vision with their incomparable fall color and fallen to the ground, they ravage our nose instead of our eyes.<br />
<br />
It's no wonder all the large mammals lose their minds this time of year. The elk go into rut and start to bugle; the foxes down in the willows scream at the drop of the hat; the moose do creepy moosey-rut things like destroying outhouses; and the coyotes, lordy, the coyotes behave like freshman frat boys having their first kegger.<br />
<br />
When everything seems to be dying, the animals give the lie to the season. This is one of the most fertile times of the year. The colder it gets up here, the more life deepens, and when the snow is an even blanket hiding all that life, we'll be skiing on our future spring.Innkeeping At Altitudehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01172783225390652627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2854477967259412811.post-35743783106519701792010-10-07T22:40:00.000-07:002012-01-04T14:08:35.027-08:00Curse you, Marie Callender!Yesterday in the late afternoon when I was relaxing from doing one of the innumerable chores around the Lodge, I took a break to watch Stupid TV. I don't know what channel it was or what the program was about: it was TV, and hence, stupid.<br />
<br />
But I do remember that between episodes, most of the commercials were about food. There was the inevitable ad about that KFC sandwich that doesn't have bread (NB: I actually broke down in shame and ordered and ate one of them. Neither the flavor nor the grease justify the guilt factor. Skip this one.) Then the ads segued to pizza. But I met my waterloo when the ads for Marie Callender's chicken pot pies came on the TV.<br />
<br />
"Curse you, Marie Callender!" I shrieked at the top of my lungs (though the imperative verb I used wasn't "curse"). I was so hungry and those pies looked so good. But instead of driving to the Safeway and buying one of her damned Chicken Pot Pies, I decided to make my own.<br />
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Here's my recipe:<br />
<br />
<b>Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F</b><br />
<br />
<b>Crust:</b><br />
<br />
You will need a deep-dish pie plate. If you don't have one, get one. Glass is good.<br />
<br />
Put <b>2 cups flour</b> and a <b>teaspoon of salt</b> in a food processor equipped with the pastry blade; Turn it on.<br />
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Gradually add <b>2 sticks (1/2 lb) butter</b>, cut into manageable pats--about 1-2 tbsp each, and dropped individually through the feeding tube of the processor.<br />
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After you've added all the butter, process until the mixture is thoroughly incorporated. It will look like corn meal. If you're not from the south and have never seen cornmeal, think a crumbly mixture of flour and butter.<br />
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Gradually add about <b>1/4 cup of very cold water</b>. Process on pulse. The water should encourage the flour/butter mixture to form a ball.<br />
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Stop processing and, after removing the pastry blade from the machine, scoop the dough out onto plastic wrap. Chill in the fridge for at least one hour before rolling out.<br />
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<b>Sauce</b><br />
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Microwave or otherwise heat to scalding <b>2-3 cups of milk</b>. Hold at temperature.<br />
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Melt in a medium saucepan <b>1/4 lb (1 stick) of butter</b>.<br />
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When the butter is bubbling, gradually stir in enough flour to form a bubbly paste in the bottom of the pan. It will take <b>1/4 and 1/2 cup of flour</b>. You basically want a mixture that holds together on the bottom of the saucepan and makes you wonder if you added too much flour. Let the mixture cook for at least a minute or so (this is so the flour will cook and the sauce won't taste like that nasty milk gravy you had at your aunt's house last Thanksgiving). Then sloooowly add the <b>hot milk</b>, whisking it into the butter/flour (snooty cooks call it a "roux") mixture.<br />
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The sauce will dramatically thicken almost immediately. Add a <b>very finely diced medium onion</b>, or <b>2 tablespoons of dried onion</b> to the sauce. Grate <b>half a clove of nutmeg</b> into the sauce. Correct the seasoning for salt--it will probably take at least a teaspoon.<br />
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Throw in <b>1 bay lea</b>f and stir into the sauce. Let the sauce rest. Don't forget to fish the bayleaf out before you proceed with the recipe, or one of your guests will have a nasty surprise.<br />
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<b>Final Prep</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
Sauté <b>3 chicken thighs</b> or 2 chicken breasts in a butter/olive oil mixture. When done through but not dry, cut into small cubes. Add to sauce.<br />
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Microwave 2 cups of <b>mixed frozen vegetables</b>. Add them to the sauce. Don't worry about excess moisture.<br />
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Get the dough out of the fridge. Divide into two parts.<br />
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Roll out the 1st piece of dough to about 1/8 inch in thickness and line the bottom of the baking dish. Ignore the overhanging dough for now. (For an extra-crispy bottom crust, paint the bottom of the pie pan with melted butter before lining it with the crust.)<br />
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<blockquote>HINT: The easiest way to roll out pie crust is on a pastry cloth (think a linen or cotton dish towel that's been rubbed well with flour). After rolling the dough out to the proper thickness, position your rolling pin at the edge of the dough, then using the pastry cloth, drape the dough over the rolling pin. Then roll the dough (minus the pastry cloth) onto the pin. You can then unroll the dough into the pie pan with a minimal amount of grief.</blockquote><br />
Pour the sauce/chicken/veggie mixture into the dish.<br />
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Roll out and cover the pie with the top crust.<br />
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Trim and make look pretty. Pierce the top crust to allow steam to escape.<br />
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<b>Cooking</b><br />
<br />
Place the pie in the preheated 425-degree oven on a baking sheet for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, decrease oven temperature to 325-degrees and bake for 50 minutes.<br />
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Let the pie rest for a few minutes before serving, but don't forget to salute Marie Callendar when you cut into it.<br />
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<b>Commentary</b><br />
<br />
The pie crust is really the secret here, and food processors are the secret weapon. If you don't have one, you can use the old "cut the butter into the flour using two knives in a scissor motion," or you can use a pastry masher. My mother used the latter, and you could have taken her pie dough out of the bowl, rolled it out, then sewn the pieces up into shoes that would hold together better than leather. For all I know, that's what they did during the Depression to keep children shod. But the food processor keeps the butter/flour mixture filled with air, so that when the butter melts into the flour during cooking, the result is thin flakes of tender crusty goodness.<br />
<b></b><br />
The sauce is a classic béchamel--basically gravy with an attitude.<br />
<br />
Instead of frozen mixed veggies, you can add just about any fresh veggies you want: broccoli or broccolini both work well. If you use fresh vegetables, nuke 'em until they are are tender and then dice them coarsely before adding them to the sauce. If you don't have a microwave, then steam the veggies. Whatever you do, DO NOT BOIL THEM. That's just wrong, and it sucks all the goodness out of the veggies.<br />
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Enjoy!Innkeeping At Altitudehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01172783225390652627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2854477967259412811.post-15044155937608792882010-09-25T15:36:00.000-07:002010-09-25T15:44:10.576-07:00Suede comes to the High Mountain LodgeLong before we were married, I knew that Julie loved horses. After we got married 28+ years ago, she had a horse for a while that she kept in stables and pastures close to our old house in Golden. However, the struggles to be a family and raise a son made it hard for her to follow her passion, and she eventually had to postpone that dream; there were many times when she wondered if it would ever be fulfilled.<br />
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Most of our marriage has been about me pursuing my goals, though over the years we did talk (sometimes very heatedly) about what the future would look like when it was "her turn." And I promised her many, many times that someday it would, indeed, be "her turn." So when I got laid off in 2008, and after a few months it became evident that the economy wasn't going to let me go out and "get another job" as I'd always been able to do in the past, we began exploring all those fantasies about what our future life might look like that we'd played with over the years.<br />
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It was a fluke that we hit upon the idea of running a Bed & Breakfast. Julie's aunt and uncle had run one for a few years in North Carolina, and we'd toyed with the idea of having one as a "stepdown" to retirement, but in the constellation of our retirement fantasies, it didn't really stand out among all the others. But on the way home from spending one of our unemployed weekends at the family cabin in the mountains, we drove past a motel overlooking the Continental Divide that we'd always joked about looking into buying if it ever came on the market.<br />
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Low and behold, there was a For Sale sign out front. We wrote down the number, called the listing agent, and a few days later, had a showing. We really liked the place, but as we were debriefing afterwards in a little roadhouse we were fond of, it became clear that, if we were going to follow the innkeeping path, we would have to acquire some skills and knowledge we didn't currently possess. Low and behold, in the lobby of the roadhouse was a Denver Free University catalog and one of the courses offered was, you guessed it, "So You Want To Own a B&B."<br />
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Long story short, we took the class, and the teachers, Becky and Roxanne, became our real estate brokers, and they ultimately negotiated the sale of the High Mountain Lodge for us.<br />
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But lordy, did we drag them through a few knotholes before we bought the place. As we began looking for an inn to buy, we began to clarify what we wanted. "Where will we put our books?" was one of our early mantras. "You have too many books," Roxanne told me. "Get rid of them. They clutter up the owner's quarters, and potential buyers have trouble imagining their own stuff there."<br />
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"We haven't even bought a place yet, and already you're working on helping us sell it?"<br />
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She narrowed her eyes. "It's never too early to plan."<br />
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Then after they started filtering our searches for books, we saw a place we really liked. "But where will we put the piano?" Julie asked.<br />
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"What piano?" asked Roxanne through gritted teeth.<br />
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"Oh, the 7-foot antique Steinway in the parlor," said Julie.<br />
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Roxanne muttered something, but I didn't catch what she said.<br />
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Then we saw the High Mountain Lodge. "Oh, Tom!" Julie exclaimed. "Look at those pastures! There's even a place for the horses!"<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_1Aq2RFRqjj8/TJ53P7NE5kI/AAAAAAAAADQ/v5HT528MaDg/s1600/DSC_0071_JPG.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_1Aq2RFRqjj8/TJ53P7NE5kI/AAAAAAAAADQ/v5HT528MaDg/s400/DSC_0071_JPG.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<br />
"What horses?" Roxanne demanded shrilly, the pitch of her voice inching upward. "You don't have horses! Do you?" Becky tried to shush her.<br />
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"Not yet," said Julie sweetly.<br />
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It was then that I realized that Julie's "turn," so long postponed, was about to take place.<br />
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The first year at the Lodge, we didn't have a moment to spare to think about acquiring a horse. We were too busy cleaning and decorating and cleaning some more, all the while figuring out how to be innkeepers and welcome the wonderful people who began to visit the lodge.<br />
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Then earlier this summer, it became clear that we weren't going to have time to do the prep work to get a horse; we didn't have time to get the fences in order, and it was clear that horses would have to wait another year.<br />
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That was before our neighbor approached us a few weeks ago and offered to give us a 3-year-old Rocky Mountain Horse mare named Suede. I almost fell out of my chair, I was so surprised. Suede has a club foot and so, though she is from champion bloodlines that helped establish the breed, she can't be shown and shouldn't be bred. But she's a sweet little girl, and she now belongs to Julie.<br />
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Julie is overjoyed and is busy plotting how we can get our son and his 20-something friends up to help us with a fence-building party sometime before the snow flies. "I knew God was going to give me a horse," she noted. "I just didn't know when or what kind of horse it was going to be.<br />
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So now, we know.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_1Aq2RFRqjj8/TJ55StVKA8I/AAAAAAAAADY/3yQ2VlAeX64/s1600/joy_jpg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_1Aq2RFRqjj8/TJ55StVKA8I/AAAAAAAAADY/3yQ2VlAeX64/s400/joy_jpg.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_1Aq2RFRqjj8/TJ57LXQX3BI/AAAAAAAAADc/XUWhJh_sw4M/s1600/suede'n'julie_jpg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_1Aq2RFRqjj8/TJ57LXQX3BI/AAAAAAAAADc/XUWhJh_sw4M/s320/suede'n'julie_jpg.jpg" width="212" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div>Innkeeping At Altitudehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01172783225390652627noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2854477967259412811.post-7589819715197632292010-09-24T18:12:00.000-07:002010-09-24T18:15:51.030-07:00The Best Things To Do While Staying at the High Mountain Lodge<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.highmountainlodge.com/gallery/newsnow1009/images/byers01_jpg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://www.highmountainlodge.com/gallery/newsnow1009/images/byers01_jpg.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><ul><li>Take a deep breath, listen to the silence, and let yourself slow down;</li>
<li>Get some carrots from Julie and walk down and feed them to the horses;</li>
<li>Drive into town and breathe in the view of the Indian Peaks and the Continental Divide as you round the curve;</li>
<li>Weather permitting, drive up into <a href="http://rockymountainnationalpark.com/">Rocky Mountain National Park</a>. If <a href="http://www.nps.gov/romo/planyourvisit/trail_ridge_road.htm">Trail Ridge Road</a> is open, start early in the morning and plan to stop frequently to take in the views and see the varied wildlife. Be sure to stop at the Visitor's Center at the top (11,796 ft/3595m elevation). Good luck with breathing up there. Then drive down into Estes Park for lunch. Turn around and repeat the process. Stop in Grand Lake and have dinner overlooking the water.</li>
<li>Sit on the deck of the High Mountain Lodge with a refreshing drink and <a href="http://www.highmountainlodge.com/gallery/landscapessum09/pages/DSC_0057_JPG.htm">watch the sun set in a blaze of color</a> over Sheep Mountain;</li>
<li>After a day of skiing, hiking, mountain biking, fishing, or a round of golf, relax in the jetted hot tub, sauna, or swimming pool in our enclosed Atrium;</li>
<li>Drive into town for a day of shopping, dining, and people- and dog-watching;</li>
<li>Sample the award-winning vintages at the <a href="http://www.winterparkwinery.com/">Winter Park Winery</a>;</li>
<li>In the summer bike the ski runs at Winter Park or the over 300 miles of area trails, from gentle rolling paths with jaw-dropping views of the high peaks to demanding double-diamond trails that will have the most daredevil adrenaline junkie squealing like a little girl;</li>
<li>Stroll, cross-country ski, or snowshoe around our pasture at the High Mountain Lodge. Venture through the willows to find the secret picnic tables along Crooked Creek and have a quiet meal with your best friend with only the high mountain peaks watching;</li>
<li>Let your inner foodie run wild over breakfast; savor a perfectly made espresso, cappucino, latte, or macchiato so good it would have an Italian barista weeping in envious rage; </li>
<li>Share the High Mountain Lodge with those you love: your friends, your lover, your children or grandchildren; even your four-footed friend;</li>
<li>Ski or Ride <a href="http://www.winterparkresort.com/">Winter Park and Mary Jane</a>--one of the nation's premier snow resorts--then come back to the <a href="http://www.highmountainlodge.com/">High Mountain Lodge</a> and tell us about your adventures. We'll even tell you our favorite secret runs and how to get there.</li>
</ul>Innkeeping At Altitudehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01172783225390652627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2854477967259412811.post-76665478221294346532010-09-12T19:05:00.000-07:002010-09-16T21:20:34.754-07:00Attack of the Killer Ceiling Fans<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The High Mountain Lodge does not have air-conditioning. At 8,700 feet in elevation, even at the height of summer, it is not unusual for the temperatures to drop into the 40s at night, and by August, we are warning guests at the Lodge to watch their step in the morning going across the multi-tiered deck to the dining lodge so they won't slip on the frost coating the boards.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">It's a different world up here--even from Denver. When the city is baking in 90+ or triple digit temperatures, we consider it a heat wave if the mercury hits 80. And on the two days this summer it hit 90 on our thermometer in July (courtesy of reflected heat from the deck; the air wasn't nearly that warm), we were willing to believe that there was something to global warming after all.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Instead of air conditioning the High Mountain Lodge has ceiling fans in every room. On warm summer nights, guests can open their windows and doors, and the fans will circulate the air and mix it with the outside breezes. Lodge guests, particularly those from lower elevations and hot climes, tend to underestimate the chill in the air. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">(Someone remind me to blog about the frigid June wedding Julie and I attended on the shores of the (frozen) lake just below the summit of Mt. Evans when it was 98 in Denver. We weren't married then, but our memory of the misery we went through sort of put the kabosh on any fantasy about getting married outside in a Colorado mountain meadow.) </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">No matter how many times we point out the extra blanket in every room (and show guests how to turn up the heat in their room), invariably, they will show up for breakfast (in shorts and t-shirts with blue lips) to comment on how COLD it is. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">So when we get the occasional phone inquiry from people in Houston asking if we have air conditioning, because they won't book with us if we don't have air conditioning, we refer them to a couple who are our competitors (who are also our friends) who have put in refrigerated air conditioning in their inn just to assuage the heat-fears of people from Houston.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">"How's that working for you?" I ask.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">"They complained about how cold it was. I got up after midnight and gave them two extra blankets and suggested they turn off the air conditioning and open the french doors onto their patio. But they were afraid of bugs."</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">"You didn't tell them that there are no bugs in Grand County?"</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">"They're from Houston. They figure you're lying to them."</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">But all of this is a prelude to telling you the story of how we (actually I) suffer from our ceiling fans.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Ceiling fans have metal chains hanging down from them: one to turn on the light, and one to adjust the speed of the rotation of the fan.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">At the High Mountain Lodge, some of the fixtures can be controlled from a switch on the wall, and some from the pull chains from the fixtures.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">But they all have chains depending from them.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">And, God help me, they all attack me.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">If the High Mountain Lodge has cooler temperatures, it also has lower humidity and vicious static electricity. When I was a little boy growing up in Oklahoma, it was fun in the wintertime to play the game of "static electricity." You'd shuffle your feet across the wool carpet and sneak up on your mom or dad (usually your mom, because she wasn't as liable to smack you when you touched the metal frame of her glasses and sent huge amounts of volts of electricty coursing through her body). She'd just scream.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">But the High Mountain Lodge has low humidity and high static electricity all year long. So maybe the fact that Julie and I own an Inn is a way for me to work off the karmic burden of torturing my parents with static electricity in my childhood.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">You see, there are several rooms in the lodge where the chains from the ceiling fans hang down low enough to attack me when I'm making a bed.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">You would think that I would have enough sense to avoid them when cleaning a room or making a bed, but I tend to get focused on projects, even if it is only making a bed. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">For the past year, I have had the misfortune to be making a bed and in the course of doing so, back up into the pull-chains from the fixture and experience a "static-electric discharge."</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">We have one room in particular (it's one of our most popular rooms), where the pull-chains for the lamp/fan fixture hand down just about at a perfect distance to attack me when I'm making the bed. And, I swear, every time I make the bed in that room, the damn fan attacks me. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Here's the scenario: I get the bottom sheet tight, then I balance the top sheet on the bed so that it's hanging equidistant from the floor on either side of the mattress.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Then I shake out the blanket (which crackles from static electricity) and back up to make sure that it's symmetrical to the bed, and get close enough to the ceiling fixture that the static electricity causes the metal chain to wrap itself around my face and discharge on my cheek just below my eye. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Then I scream and begin to curse and roar and stagger about like Boris Karloff imitating Frankenstein's monster in the movies and fall over one of the chairs in front of the fireplace. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Nobody told me that innkeeping involved doing battle with static electricity. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">I wonder if there would be anyway we could get our electrical co-op to suck up the excess static electricity I generate when making beds?</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Prolly not. Julie doesn't believe I work all that hard; an electrical utility would demand more evidence than an electrical discharge scar across my face.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div>Innkeeping At Altitudehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01172783225390652627noreply@blogger.com0