Colorado is absolutely gorgeous.

Snowboarding in Colorado is an incredible experience. We went to Vail today (this post is from Friday but I wasn’t able to post it until now). I had no idea that the terrain here would be so different from the East Coast. In the morning we stayed on the front of the mountain, and I really enjoyed the fresh powder. Some of the trails we did were groomed on one side and left fresh on the other side. I had a blast weaving back and forth. I am happy we all got up super early despite being exhausted because the conditions were really incredible. I did not see one spot of ice. It also snowed all day long which was so fun! It wasn’t stinging snow until the very last run.

Vail is gorgeous.

About halfway through the morning I became absolutely famished, and exactly at that time PB offered me half of his Luna Protein bar in the Cookie Dough flavor. It was exactly what I needed to hold me over until we were ready to stop.

For lunch we headed to Vendetta’s in Vail Village.

We wanted to eat lunch as quickly as possible so we basically just stopped at the first restaurant. We all shared an order of mozzarella sticks, and I had one dipped in sauce.

I ordered an unsweetened iced tea and the Vegetarian sandwich with grilled vegetables, sprouts, provolone cheese, tomato, and avocado. I took off one of the slices of cheese (there were two) and only ate half of the bread. Instead of fries or pasta salad I asked for a house salad, but it accidentally came doused in dressing. I could barely take 2 bites of it because the dressing was so heavy.

Of course I also had to try PhillyBoy’s lunch. He had a chicken parmesan sandwich with french fries and I had two bites of each. I still felt absolutely HANGRY after this lunch and ordered a hot chocolate, which came with whipped cream. I love enjoying hot chocolate when we are skiing, but I haven’t had one with whipped cream in years. It was delicious!

I was impressed by the quality of the food for the price. PB’s sandwich came out extremely hot (just the way he likes it) and all the vegetables in my sandwich were very fresh.

After lunch it was time to head to the BACK BOWLS! Every time I mentioned Colorado to friends I was told that we must check out the back bowls at Vail. I am kind of mad we didn’t go earlier in the day because they were incredible! Here are my thoughts:

The trail we had to take to get to China Bowl (and The Orient Express chair lift) was extremely flat and difficult for us snowboarders. Thank goodness PB is a great snowboarder now (He really is! I’ll take a video tomorrow) because it was an incredible challenge. I had to unstrap my board a couple of times and every leg muscle was burning by the time we got to the bowl.

China Bowl itself was insane. Riding through snow that is several feet high is an extraordinary experience. I really focused on keeping the tip of my board up so I wouldn’t get stuck in the snow, and it was like surfing on snow! It was so easy to pick up a lot of speed without being afraid of getting hurt.
PB and Gina, the newest to mountain sports, did NOT like the back bowls at all. I think that it is just such a different type of skiing/snowboarding and might take some time for them to appreciate. I bet PB will forget that he hated his first time there when we go back some other time. It got super dark really early in the back bowls! The clouds came down really low by about 3 PM, so it makes sense they close early.

Getting back to Vail Village was a bit of a difficult task and required flat terrain again. I did not like that as my legs were tired. At the end of the day all four of us were exhausted. I have never had to engage my leg muscles to the extent I had to today. It feels really good to know that I used my body so fully today. I feel great. I also felt really hungry again!

We had a bit of an issue getting back to the car as, um, we couldn’t find it at first. After 10 minutes we did and made it back to our hotel. We busted into the snacks we brought right away.

I had a serving of Stacy’s chips plus a few extra chips + 2 tbs hummus. I only had a small taste of the guacamole because it had way too much garlic. I didn’t even know guacamole ever contained garlic. I also had a few pistachios and an orange. I love snack time after snowboarding!

Thoughts on eating out while traveling so far: I think that I have made really good choices so far. It can be so hard to balance enjoying different foods and keeping a healthy diet, especially when the mountains remind you of junk food like mozzarella sticks and french fries. I am trying to focus on eating the foods I know are good for me while having a few tastes of the fun foods.

We are all trying to get motivated to head to the hot tub downstairs to soothe our muscles and relax. We are all cozied up in our rooms and it is really hard to go anywhere!