Mark Yemma at the Two Elks restaurant atop Vail Mountain

Mark Yemma at the Two Elks restaurant atop Vail Mountain

By Eileen Yemma

Vail (Day 2 of 3) — AAH… sunshine!

There’s nothing like a perfect blue-sky day wherever you are vacationing.

In our case, we are skiing Vail Mountain—a lot of Vail Mountain in fact, by logging on to www.epicmix.com  –23,000 feet over the last two days.  When we ride up a lift, our lift pass is scanned, counting the amount of vertical we have skied.  It is fun to know that!   I also learned there is an app for Epic Mix that I can download for my phone—and should any of us need ski patrol—my nephew nearly did when he got stuck in waste deep powder today—you can call  them right from your phone.  I like safety features like that!

On a blue bird sunny day, the views at the top of Vail Mountain are spectacular, as is the terrain.  “The best day of skiing I’ve had in a long time,” my brother in law Mark Yemma.

“The weather was ideal, and so many times we’ve skied in Colorado the visibility isn’t good…this was perfect!  The snow was good, the weather was good and leaving a little later in the morning helped…everyone was energized.  I think the sun shine has a lot to do with it!”

Certainly we were glad for the snowfall yesterday but we couldn’t appreciate the mountain views.  Wow! And of course today a lot of the snow was groomed.

I also really like that when we get back to our condo—Montaneros, a Wyndham Vacation Rentals property, the place is spic and span.  I love that I don’t have to lift a finger!  You expect that in a hotel but here we have the convenience of a condo—the space for our extended family and a kitchen, but I feel like I’m on vacation with someone else to clean up the mess.

There is something wonderful about family ski trips no matter what the kids ages—in our case, kids ranging from 22 to 32.  It’s nice that our grown kids are willing to share their precious vacation time with us; It’s nice to relive memories of when they were little kids.

It’s also nice to catch up with family who live across he country in a stress-free environment—not a big family occasion like a wedding or a funeral, just a week when we can leave the stresses of work and the chores of home behind for some fun in the sun.

It is supposed to snow more tomorrow.