Trip reports about the places Christopher Elliott and his family have visited over the years.
Before my feet touched the ground, I knew something was wrong. I felt that familiar sore throat, the feverish chills, the body aches and fatigue.
I had the flu.
I rolled back into my bed at the Crowne Plaza in Denver and silently wondered, “How bad is this going to be?”
The answer came soon enough. Two of my kids — the indefatigable 11-year-old and the high-energy 13-year-old — were uninfected.
Crested Butte is Colorado’s most serious ski resort.
Seriously challenging, seriously scary — and seriously fun.
The mountain’s almost-vertical, double black diamond runs, most of them accessible from a T-bar lift, are in a class by themselves. (A T-bar? Haven’t seen one of those in years.) These slopes will put the fear of God in you even if you’re a lifelong skier.
Purgatory sounds like a scary anecdote from Mrs. Olson’s Sunday School class. As in, “If you sin, you will end up skiing the slopes of Purgatory for all eternity.”
That wouldn’t be such a bad thing, come to think of it.
Mention Colorado Springs and you probably think of Pikes Peak, the highest mountain in the southern Front Range of the Rockies, or the Broadmoor Hotel, the historic resort nestled in the hills overlooking the city.
But what happens when you take both of those out of the picture, plus most of the other tourists?
The suburbs of Arizona’s most populous city are probably the last place you’d expect to find adventure. But you don’t have to look far past the walls of its master-planned communities to discover a wilder side of this place.
This sure doesn’t feel like Salt Lake City.
My kids had no idea what that meant when I said that as we were strolling the streets of Utah’s capital. They weren’t here decades ago when I saw the old Salt Lake City, a less vibrant and interesting place than the one they were experiencing.
The mere mention of their names evokes images of Technicolor desertscapes, vermilion cliffs and vivid sunsets. They are Utah’s “Mighty Five” national parks.
The circus hasn’t come to Savannah, but it sort of looks like it. That kid you saw dodging tourists and on a unicycle recently in Georgia’s oldest city was my 12-year-old son, Iden. The guy chasing after him — well, that was me.
In Arizona’s Sonoran desert, things aren’t always what they seem. Like those pigs scurrying around the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, a botanical garden a few miles outside of Tucson.
With its iconic painted deserts and vast, seemingly endless roads, Arizona is the ultimate off-the-beaten-path destination. But visit the Grand Canyon state during the off-season, when all the visitors have gone home, and it’s a special kind of quiet.
