What the heck, I thought you guys were doing to Denver? Welp, no. We decided en route to Denver that we would power through a little more mileage to help be closer to Utah in the morning. After what seemed like hours of googling hotels and towns that were close to I-70, we settled on Vail. At first it seemed near impossible to get a hotel for one night in Vail for under $400/night. Thanks to Expedia, we were able to stay at the Vail Cascade for half price! We had never heard of the Vail Cascade, but the pictures on TripAdvisor showed a girl drinking coffee in front of a mountain, so I fell in love and took the plunge. We arrived around 9:30pm and let me tell you, this place was a sight for sore eyes. After where we stayed in Nashville, driving up to this was a welcome surprise.   When we checked in, the front desk lady said “…and you’ll be staying with us for 8 nights, Miss Garrison?”. My eyes must’ve bugged out of my head, frantically thinking that I checked a wrong box while reserving the hotel. Luckily she had spelled my name wrong and our reservation was good for one night. Not that we would’ve minded staying for 8 nights! This place was beautiful. After almost 10 hours of driving, you can probably imagine we weren’t looking our best. She must’ve picked up on this, and began asking our story. We explained who we were, where we were from and where we were going. Before we knew it, she was upgrading us to a mountain view room and explaining that they had a hot tub and fire pit underneath the stars that we could relax in! Thanks, front desk lady!   The next morning was DAVE’S BIRTHDAY! We woke up to this amazing view: And clearly I took full advantage of the bathrobes that came with the room! Score! We had a little breakfast creekside before sitting in some rocking chairs to do some blogging and have some coffee. This was one of my favorite mornings of the trip…

We decided to explore the rest of the resort. It was amazing how we barely stepped out of the hotel, and we were on a trail by a creek next to the mountains! Such a beautiful place.

After finding that we could get down by the creek, we decided to break out the “good camera”… AKA my parent’s camera that they were kind enough to let us borrow! After dozens of selfies and asking random strangers to take photos, we thought it would be time to utilize the self timer on the camera. It took a little practice. It is not easy to run across rocks and water in 10 seconds to assume the position! I’d like to call these next 2 pictures “Adventures in Self Timing”:

While our trip to Vail was quite short, we both agreed that this is a place we would love to come back and visit another time. On to Utah!