Hike the River: Steamboat Colorado 2012

When a man turns 50, he can choose how to react. He basically has two choices – 1) he can withdraw and decide it’s time to slow down, do less, cut back and basically start the slide into old age; or 2) he can be bold, go large and do things he has never done before in his previous half century. And so Sleepy, upon reaching this milestone, choose option 2. Because hey, he’d already been doing the slow down, do less and cut back (this does not apply to eating mind you!) stuff for a loooong time!
So a decision was made back in the long hot summer of 2011 that Sleepy, accompanied by Helpdesk and Gusto, would heed the call and head west “not-so-young men”. And so we did. Destination - Steamboat Springs, CO for a week of skiing, snowmobiling, hot springing, sightseeing and good eating. Although no snow fell on us during our week, there was still plenty for us to enjoy on the slopes at Steamboat and in the Routt National Forest, where we traveled about 45 miles on snowmobiles. And to our amazement, we learned something incredible about Sleepy in those 45 miles… truth be told, we learned it in only the first mile or two!
In those first couple of miles, we discovered the one thing that Sleepy does not do slowly. The dude will flat out fly on a snowmobile! Once we got to a large open meadow and were given a green light by our guide to have some get acquainted time with our machines, Sleepy wasted no time in seeing just how fast he and his 550cc Polaris could go! Although he didn’t say anything, his actions screamed “Get back you folks from Australia! Eat my snow spray Helpdesk and Gusto!” as he shot out in front of the group (As Seen on TV – or at least in one of our videos) leaving us to marvel and wonder “who is this guy?”.
Sleepy, we think, has racin’ genes and they were in full effect during our 4 hour snowmobile tour. Sleepy got a new name to reflect his need for speed and his desire to pass everyone that dared be in front of him. On that day, Sleepy became “Freddy Petty”.
Helpdesk and Sleepy got to meet and ski with Gusto’s long time friends Chuck and Laura, who live in Denver. They drove up to spend a few days in Steamboat with us during the first part of our trip. Unfortunately we missed out on the Sunday brunch buffet at the landmark El Rancho restaurant with them because we were delayed for over an hour in leaving Charlotte due to the replacement of an “air bleed valve” on the plane. But, we more than made up for that missed Colorado time on the end of our trip.
Our trip was originally planned to run from Sunday to Friday; but ended up extended to Sunday, when Denver was hit with a record snowfall causing over 600 flight cancellations. We did a bit more sightseeing with our extra time. We went to Craig, CO on Friday and toured a museum that featured exhibits on the early western settlers, cowboys and gunslingers. On Saturday, we made the beautiful drive down to Glenwood Springs, CO. The drive through Glenwood Canyon was spectacular (good thing we traded out a stinky Rav4 for a new Forester with a very large sun roof at Hertz on our first day!). We had a great visit to Glenwood Springs and took in such sights as the tram ride to the Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park, the Hotel Colorado and the famous Hot Springs.
It was a great week and a wonderful way to celebrate with Sleepy and ensure he made the right choice on his birthday!