Our son has recently switched from snowboarding to skiing and wanted to go to a big mountain out west to test his new skills. I’m always up for a ski trip so we agreed to arrange a trip over his spring break. Normally, we’d fly to Denver, rent a car and hope for the best weather wise getting over Loveland Pass to the ski areas. I’ve done it many times and sometimes its a breeze and other times its hours of white knuckle driving and sitting in stuck traffic on an icy interstate.

Last summer, Nick took an Amtrak train from PA to Seattle to get to his summer job as a salmon processor in Naknek, Alaska. He loved the train ride and suggested that we take Amtrak to go skiing. I’ve never done a cross country train trip before so I thought it sounded fun. We looked into the options and the best option for us was clearly going to Winter Park, Colorado. There is an Amtrak station in Fraser, Colorado which is a 20 minute bus ride to Winter Park resort. The plan was for Nick to take Amtrak from State College, PA and I would fly from Pensacola, Florida. I would meet up with him in Chicago and ride with him from there.

Before boarding the train in Chicago, we had an excellent breakfast at Lou Mitchells diner, the start of Route 66. This year is their 100th year in business. The food was excellent!

The train ride was a lot of fun and a great way to see the rural countryside. We arrived right on time and took the bus to our condo at Zephyr Mountain Lodge, right next to the Winter Park gondola.

The first day of skiing was gorgoeus. Blue skys, upper 20’s at the base and nice packed powder conditions. Since Nick is new to skiing, we stayed mostly on the green and groomed blue slopes. He did exceptionally well for only having skied a few times on a tiny Tussy Mountain in Center county PA. We woke up on day two with 3-4 inches of fresh powder and a party sunny sky. We skied some of the more advanced blue slopes in the back bowls that day. Day three was another beautiful sunny day with temps in the high 20’s. We skied hard all day. After the skiing was done, changed clothes and rode the Gondola to the top of the mountain where they had a great Apre’ ski event. There was live music, food and plenty of alcohol. It was cool to watch the sunset from the top of the mountain.

It was an awesome three days of skiing and I was thrilled I got to spend some quality father/son time with Nick. The return trip home however was going to get bizarre. Come back for the next blog post to hear about our long strange trip home.