Labor Day weekend is just a few days away, and I hope you all have fun plans! AAA is predicting that nearly 35 million Americans will travel more than 50 miles from their house for the holiday — the most for Labor Day weekend since 2008.

I know a ton of people hit the beach for one last hurrah before the unofficial end of summer (the real first day of fall is Sept. 22). But there are tons of beachy photos on this blog, so in honor of the upcoming vacation, I wanted to share some photos from one of our stops on our cross-country drive last summer: Colorado.

When my aunt and uncle got a timeshare in Vail back in the early 90s, the intent was to be able to ski with friends. But they soon realized that Colorado is also delightful in the summer — particularly in contrast to the weather at their home in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. It was also a lot closer and easier for my family to visit from Phoenix, so we started driving up to meet them and stay in the condo in the summer when I was 11 or 12.

 

After a few years, they decided they loved it so much that they wanted to stay more than a week or two each time, so they built a house. We moved away, so we were only able to visit Vail a few times, but I remembered how awesome it is there and thought Toby would love it.

 

So, when we were moving from DC to California last summer, we decided to stop and stay a few days with my aunt and uncle. And while the area has grown quite a bit, it’s just as gorgeous and fun as it was when I was in middle school.

There are several cute shops and good restaurants in Vail Village, and some outlets and such in nearby towns, but most of the activities to do around Vail in the summer are outdoors. We went on a few hikes with my aunt (that’s her with Toby in the photo above) and uncle, and the views were absolutely breathtaking. The altitude is breathtaking, too: I had to walk a lot slower than normal so I wouldn’t pass out, but it was fun nonetheless.

Besides hiking near my aunt and uncle’s house, we also wanted to take the ski gondolas up to the top of Vail Mountain and hike down (I had an extremely traumatic experience biking down that mountain when I was younger, so you couldn’t pay me to do THAT). Unfortunately the gondolas weren’t running when we were there, but we did find another place to hike nearby.

Since we were only in Colorado for a few days — and actually had to drive from there straight to California, because our moving truck arrived early — we didn’t get a chance to do all of the activities available in the area. It would have been fun to do more hiking, to go white water rafting, to drive over to Breckenridge or Aspen, or to ride the Leadville train (we did that on the Fourth of July one year and it SNOWED). There are seriously tons of things to do around there! We did get to eat at Sweet Basil one night, though, which I highly recommend.

And though we weren’t there long, we had an absolutely fantastic time. Maybe we’ll even try visiting in the winter! But if you ever get the chance to stop by Vail in the summer, do it. Just make sure you bring a sweater or a jacket along, even in July.