Breckenridge, CO - Day 3 - Sledding and the Gondola

On our last day in Breckenridge, we are all spending the day with our group's youngest generation--our grandkids. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that we all acted like kids. We started the morning out with a great home-cooked breakfast, and then started the sled-fest.

We brought one sled with us, but we were glad to see that our rental house was equipped with half a dozen more. That means that everyone could sled as much as they wanted. But for some reason, we took most of the pictures when a child was also on the sled.

We found our best option for sledding was the road in front of our house. It's icy and slick, and seldom-traveled by cars. It's also a very long down-hill run that goes all the way to the stop sign out of sight!

At 14-months of age, this is one of Eli's first snow experiences. Uncle Blake is teaching him about snow balls and the fun he is going to have with this strange cold white stuff.

Just like Carter, Eli had plenty of people that wanted to go sledding with him. We let Dad take him on one of his first trips down the hill.

Eli prefers his Grand-dude to anyone else, so he loved going down the hill with him as well.

The only problem with all these long sled rides down the hill . . .

is that you have to make the long walk back up the road to do it all again. We should have counted the number of times that we all made that walk today!

It's a tough walk for Eli's little legs, so he got to ride on the sled both ways.

That's a back-breaking exercise to walk uphill carefully dragging a sled at the proper angle when your uncle is six feet tall.

Some of our sledders weren't as careful. Our older son liked to run and then throw his body onto the sled for a quick start down the hill.

That's probably why we have the most pictures of him falling off his sled.

We wonder where he gets this unabashed sense of adventure and need for speed?!?

But sled wrecks happen to even the more (ahem) mature sledders that smash into the snow walls on the side of our slick road.

Eli would find that his favorite form of sledding would be going down the snow bank on his belly. He has been practicing this technique for the last three days inside the house, whizzing down the three flights of stairs on his stomach.

We were blessed with another perfect-weather day, and we took way too many pictures in the snow this morning.

Some of us where shedding coats this morning when it warmed up from all the calories being burned while sledding.

After a delicious lunch of leftovers, all twelve of us opted for a walk to downtown Breckenridge. It's a half-mile walk, and we thought that was simpler than loading up into three vehicles and trying to find three parking places in busy Breckenridge.

We soon found out that Carter was only interested in this downtown shopping until she made her purchase of an over-sized cookie at the local bakery.

Then Gram and Grand-dude took her on an adventure. We started at the downtown park, where your trip down the slipper slide now ends in a snow drift.

Then we took her on the gondola that starts in downtown Breckenridge. Called the BreckConnect, it allows passengers to ride effortlessly up the mountain to the base of Peak 7 and Peak 8. This is the same gondola that the skiers have taken the last two mornings to start their ski day. Carter loved it!

The other good news is that this ride is free for everyone, all year long. This is the same free gondola ride that Mark and Denisa took in the summer of 2020. We took the free bus from Frisco to Breckenridge, then this gondola to the top of the mountain, then hiked ten miles down the other side of the mountain to our car back in Frisco. So we are big fans of Breckenridge's BreckConnect any time of the year. But today it had particularly lovely snow views from inside this enclosed gondola--and we had particularly lovely company to share it with!

This trip also allowed us to get off at Peak 7 to see the skiers coming down the mountain. For the last two days Carter has known that all of her relatives were going skiing, but she really didn't know what "skiing" looked like. Her parents are planning on her going to ski school next time, so now she has seen what that means.

We shared our gondola ride down with two groups of skiers finishing up their day on the mountain. Then we made the half-mile walk to our rental for one last dose of sledding. It was a great way to start and end our last day in Breckenridge.

We've been blessed with another day of great weather while we wandered more of God's wonderfully white wonders. He sealed the day with a beautiful sunset that we could watch from our patio balcony beside the snowman family. Life is good!