I’ve struggled over where to begin this post for roughly twenty minutes now, it’s intriguing that after one of the best weekends of my life all I can recollect are the little things; laughter, stories, adventures and the such…yet no concrete storyline. But in many ways that’s the beauty of such a weekend, through words it’s nearly impossible to recount such events…hopefully photos will do the job.
Friday July 11th Friday Afternoon Club at Vail
It doesn’t take much to get our group on Vail mountain, so when Friday Afternoon Club rolls around offering free gondola rides to the top of Vail and entertainment it quickly becomes the place to be. This Friday was no exception, the plaza on top of the gondola was jam packed with a wide array of people enjoying the start of their weekend. Perfect weather kept the crowd up there till threats of walking down forced everyone to cram into the last gondolas.
For the older portion of the crowd the next move was simple, get off the gondola walk all 10 yards to Garfinkel’s and keep the night going. The bar was crowded as was the deck, but unquestionably with such a nice night the deck was the the place to be as evidenced by a festive and lively crowd.
Saturday July 12th Hiking down West Vail
Saturday we ventured off into the depths of West Vail where we spent the better part of the day walking down the mountain. Exploring the terrain, vegetation and paths was quite intriguing and presented plenty of photo opportunities which will be showcased here.
Curious George would be proud
It turns out Thomas isn’t a lightweight!
A giant among trees…or a gnome?
Graham enjoying this meadow to its fullest
Sunday July 13th Bottling Wine and Eating Raw Vegan
For Scott, Thomas and Graham the opportunity to tour a wine bottling facility was too much to pass on…regardless if it was Sunday. The three of us were accompanied (or should I say chaperoned) by experienced wine producer Rich tenBraak as we toured the bottling facilities at the 4 Eagle Ranch. Rich has bottled over 2500 bottles in his life and was unquestionably the perfect guide to our tour (check his interview from last week). As for the actual bottling, well it was everything you could ever desire and more.
[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=VLOJ_jSfKnk&feature=related]
All of us would like to thank 4 Eagle Ranch for a great experience!!
Rich and Graham check out Rich’s barrel from last year
Thomas, Graham and Scott cheers our ‘hard work’
Following an afternoon of wine, and quite the drive back from Walcott to West Vail through some amazing back roads, we converged at our concierge Pamela Saden’s house for a raw vegan dinner (click here to see her interview). The dinner had been scheduled for a week, but it had been on our minds for the last few days and ever since we left the wine behind.
So what does a raw vegan dinner constitute? While to begin, cooking in methods that conform to raw vegan is actually much more liberating than the stereotypes suggest, for example we ate salsa, guacamole and hamburgers. Or at least that’s what we called them, in reality we were amazed by the attention to detail and commitment to your diet that a raw vegan diet requires. Raw vegans support a fully vegetarian lifestyle, but follow a strict set of other guidelines to cooking such as the inability to cook foods over 1100 F. I think what all of us really learned from our meal is that your diet is something you should take pride in, its easy to eat whatever is in front of you but showing discipline and using your diet as a means of improving or regulating your life is very honorable.
For our meal, the carrot pecan burgers were made from carrots, pecans, olive oil, mushrooms, cilantro and a few other ingredient before being dehydrated for 8 hours. They were sandwiched between pieces of onion bread that contained onion, flax, sunflower seeds all of which was dehydrated for 2 days. The combination was great, it had a hint of Indian cooking but filled all of us up.
Desert and drinks were also quite the treat, fresh juice preceded our meal and prepped our stomachs for the coming meal. Dessert, well anyone that thinks vegans are missing out hasn’t had Pamela’s cheese cake. Everyone at the table was delighted by it, in fact I’d challenge nearly any Vail Valley restaurant to beat it.
We’re done, no more and be proud if you made it all this way….yes it was long but let me tell you this was one amazing weekend. Hopefully we’ll have more condensed updates for our weekends in the future!!
