After yesterday’s excitement, I didn’t think today’s post would be nearly as interesting.  Turns out I was wrong.

After a decent night’s sleep, we breakfasted at our condo and decided to spend a leisurely day walking around Vail without anything specific planned.  Summer in Vail is gorgeous and we looked forward to enjoying the cool weather and lush environment.  Free garage parking in summer is a nice perquisite, too.

We got there pretty early, before many places had opened, and were able to take in the town without much other activity to distract us. 

Vail had a snowy winter and the excess snow melt has made the river very strong.  Sandbags were a common sight along the lower parts of the river.

We noticed there were tours of the Betty Ford Alpine Garden which sounded like a nice way to spend a couple hours, so we headed in that direction and waited for the tour to begin.

Turns out, the tour group was just us and two ladies from Austin, one of whom lives quite close to us.  Her parents live in Vail and she was able to give some restaurant recommendations, one of which we followed for dinner today.

The gardens were gorgeous.  Especially when the guide explained that Vail is typically very dry (not our experience so far) and has a 55-day growing season between freezes.  The garden has about 5,000 plants, many of which are not perennials which shows how much the volunteers do every year to make it so beautiful.  They were impeccably maintained, too, with plenty of bare earth and nary a weed to be seen.

Once I have time to edit them at home I’ll post more pictures from the garden, but here are a few straight from the camera:

We got a bit of a sunburn on the tour, but it was worth it.  One thing we learned was how awesome aspen trees are.  Besides being beautiful, which we already knew, they can be used as a form of sunblock by rubbing your hands on the powdery surface and putting this on your skin.  It also contains salicylic acid, which is used in acne creams, and apparently some animals eat the bark to take care of oral infections.  Pretty fascinating.  We also didn’t realize that multiple aspen frequently stem from the same root system.  Apparently Utah has a gigantic network of aspen all with the same root system and DNA, and parts of which are around 30,000 years old.  It is said to be the largest living organism on earth.

After the garden tour we were hungry and set off back toward Vail Village for lunch.  We ate at La Bottega and had a reasonably-priced (for Vail) meal.  My Italian sub was yummy and Teri loved the Caesar salad that came with her chicken parmesan.  The parm was unfortunately not very fresh, but we left satisfied.

After this we walked around a bit more and looked into Gondola tickets for tomorrow.  I wanted to pick up some wine to drink in the evenings at our condo, and bought a Francis Ford Coppola Director’s Cut 2008 Pinot Noir (a pinot is generally a good compromise between my love of reds and Teri’s predilection for light and sweet).  We also got some Rocky Mountain Chocolate Company dark chocolate to go with it.  I’m enjoying them now as I write this.  I do love me some wine and dark chocolate.

It began to drizzle a bit and was getting cooler, so we headed back to the condo to relax before our 6pm dinner reservations.  Not long after we got back, we heard the proverbial “freight train” sound of strong winds tearing past our front door.  Patio furniture was getting blown over/away and stepping into the wind was dangerous due to flying debris.  As the worst of the wind died down, we thought the experience was over.  Moments after I had come in from putting the furniture back, someone knocked on our door to ask if ours was the Focus parked in the corner.  It was, and had narrowly missed being nailed by the upper limbs of a falling tree.  I rushed out to move the car for a crew which was already working to remove the debris.  In my haste I didn’t think to take a picture before moving the car, but it had been in the empty space on the right in this picture and just a couple feet from undergoing some significant damage:

I couldn’t believe that the car had received not a dent, and thanked God for protecting us in another close call (we opted out of insurance, so this could have been costly and resulted in us eating PB&Js for the rest of the trip!).

At this point, people were talking about hail and possible tornados coming in.  Not willing to take another chance with the rental, we hurriedly changed into nicer clothes for dinner, grabbed the laptop (more on this in a moment) and ran toward the car right as pea-sized hail began to fall.  It was now raining heavily but we got to the free parking garage in West Vail without suffering any damage. 

Shortly before the wind had arrived, Teri had been working to send her aqua aerobics routine to someone at Lifetime Fitness where she teaches.  Her sub had backed out shortly before our trip and none of the other aqua instructors were available, so she had sent a desperate email to the staff asking for someone to fill in.  Someone did volunteer but had never taught aqua, so Teri was working to send her the lesson plan in time for the class tomorrow.

Now that we were safely in the parking garage, Teri was able to finish the lesson plan, but we no longer had easy access to wi-fi.  My phone is rooted so I can make it a wireless hotspot, but the signal in the garage was extremely spotty.  By this time the rain had just stopped so we spent the next several minutes outside trying to get my computer to pair with my phone so we could send the email.  It took some patience, but finally it sent.  Whew!

The last item on our agenda was dinner at Russell’s, an upscale steak house which had been recommended to us.  We arrived right as they opened and took one of two tables by the windows.  Shortly after we sat down, another young couple took their seats.  We ordered, their specialty steak (med-rare) for Teri and the filet mignon (med) for me.  The other couple also ordered filets.  We got ours and they were well-cooked and delicious.  The béarnaise was wonderful and the steaks melted in our mouths.  I’m admittedly not super experienced when it comes to eating really good cuts of beef, but Teri is and she enjoyed it.

Unfortunately, our neighbors didn’t feel this way.  They began complaining loudly to the waitresses about them being overcooked (the girl had ordered medium as well and was upset that it wasn’t pink all the way through…mine was a perfect reddish pink center with a thin sear around the outside, so I can’t imagine hers was much different) and tasteless.  Her male companion went along with her complaints, but seemingly more to agree with her apparently exquisite palette.  She continued to whine throughout most of dinner, saying she’d had better steak and Applebee’s and insisting that she was “really sorry, we’re really not complainers…”  Yeah right.  Pretentious Vail brat compensating for being raised by snobby and inattentive parents by pretending to be an expert food critic, more like.

Anywho, this prattle didn’t ruin our dinner as we were able to focus on planning the rest of our stay.  We returned to our condo (parking well away from any large trees, this time) and walked around the building to survey more of the damage from the tree.  We didn’t expect to see this:

Apparently we had experienced a “microburst,” a small but focused downforce of wind that can cause straight-line gales with massive strength.  No kidding.

Glad to be safe, we’re ready for an uneventful evening!  Despite more excitement today, we’re having a wonderful time in God’s creation and enjoying each other’s company.  Tomorrow we rent mountain bikes…