Mountain Town #2: Winter Park

We spent two weekends in a row this month visiting some mountain towns nearby.  The first was Breckenridge which I posted about here.  Last weekend we went to Winter Park, which is also about 2 hours away.  This time we met up with our friends Nate & Kim (who were visiting from California) on Saturday and stayed until Sunday.

The view coming in to Winter Park

Our hotel was right by the ski resort

We started the day off with a hike.  Someone recommended this hike to us saying the trailhead was only 9 miles away.  Well, it turns out that it was 9 miles on an extremely rocky, steep dirt road, so it took us an hour and a half to get there!! (Who recommends that type of a hike to out-of-towners?!  They didn't even know what kind of car we drove.  Good thing we had our Subaru).

The dirt road we took to the trail head.  At least it was pretty!

 There was a really, really, really old train bridge on our way up that was pretty cool.

The views were spectacular! It was a beautiful day.

It's crazy how the trees just stop!  We were up so high that it's too cold for any trees to ever grow.

eating lunch

driving back down

 After that, we went to dinner, sat in the hot tub at our hotel and stayed up late chatting and eating snacks.

The next day we had planned to hike a 14-er (14,000 + ft) but we got rained out.  So instead, we slept in, went to brunch at a cute little diner and spent the afternoon at an awesome "hang out" place.  In one little building there was bowling, movie theaters, a restaurant and pool tables.  It was so charming, but a little expensive, so we just stuck to pool, which was one $1 per game.  Even the bathroom was awesome!

The boys

The girls

The cool bathroom.  The whole place had a very retro/vintage feel.  I loved it!

Our view on the way out of town.  I love the fall colors!

It was a great weekend and I'm so glad I got these two mountain towns crossed off my bucket list!