Trip Report

The weekend was spent in Vail playing corporate spouse. Accommodations were nice:

 and the hotel had some nice sitting and conversation areas:

 with typical Vail village architecture surrounding us:

The weekend went as expected.

• Leisurely late breakfasts with the other spouses.
• Walking and perusing the hideously over-priced art and craft show going on in the village. 
• Odd discussions with the other spouses, ranging from the difference between military service in the Korean War and Iraq and Afghanistan to the joys and pains of raising kids of all ages.
• Mandatory oh'ing and ah'ing over all little ones less than a year old. Seeing little ones always pulls the heart strings, but then you remember diapers and poop containment system failures and ...

The spouses divided 23 and 7, female to male. Much better than in previous years. Ages ranged from mid-20's to late 70's. (See war service discussion above.) Makes for a diverse group, with everything from retired military to former ballerinas. Rabid Republicans to raving Democrats. Parents of kids ranging from close to 40 to not yet a year old. I.e. a general mixed bag thrown together while the spouses went through the meetings.

Saturday afternoon a lot of us headed out and drove up the mountains on an old dirt track for about 10 miles to get to Piney Lake, a little lake in a valley at about 9,300 feet. You can tell the the group is mostly mountain based - we all had pickups or other vehicles with adequate clearance to make it over the rocks and holes in the path. Those that were using regular vehicles had to hitch a ride.

We spent the afternoon hiking and picnicking, etc. L was able to get her canoe fix, canoeing around the lake with another attendee and her son. (Her husband was another spouse named Dan and neither one of us canoe - so it worked out well to send the spouses and offspring out on a canoe.) Here is a poor quality cell phone picture of L and her fellow canoeists out on the lake:

Anything better will have to await the emails of those with digital cameras. {*grin*}

Of course, Saturday evening was the big banquet and awards ceremony. Everything from absolute formal to casual dressy. Ties and coats for the men and dress plumage for the women. Sunday began the journey back home. Over Vail Pass and back to Breckenridge where L's office is, then me heading up to the tunnel and then down to the high plains. I was early enough to beat the traffic, so I got home about 5pm.

One anomaly that struck me was the difficulty the lowlanders from corporate had with the altitude. The group L is a part of are mostly mountain based at altitudes ranging from 7,000 to 10,000 feet. So the altitude at Vail (8,022 feet) isn't a problem, but the corporate people came from near sea level, so they experienced much of the standard tourist version of altitude sickness.  Out here on the high plains, we are still at more than 4,000 feet, so it isn't nearly as much of a transition.

Time to check and see if the temperature has dropped enough to open the house up. It reached 105 today and was still well above 80 at 10pm. Forecast is for more of the same all week, typical July 4th type weather. Ugh!