It even works if you live in Lincoln, Nebraska, the national capital of Flyover Country. With an 8-hour limit, the two options are Colorado's Front Range to the west and Kansas City and the Lake of the Ozarks to the southeast. With winter nearly half over and just an inch of snow having fallen in Lincoln at the time we took the trip, west it was.
So here's our goal: Leave Lincoln at 4:30 p.m. on a Friday and return around midnight on Sunday. In about 56 hours we'll relax in a hot tub, eat New York bagels for breakfast, snowshoe up a mountain in Rocky Mountain National Park, buy $210 worth of outdoor gear for $60, eat a German dinner, nurse our aching muscles and bulging stomachs in the hot tub, eat bagels again, climb another mountain, eat a Cajun breakfast, and go shopping in Boulder. Ready? Here we go!
Accomodations
For cut-rate lodging, stop first at Priceline.com, where the multi-talented Captain Kirk can sport a mean toupee, sell you cheap plane tickets and get you a very wallet-friendly hotel room, all on the same site. We discovered on a previous trip that Priceline.com can get you to the U.S. Supreme Court for a historic abortion case on short notice. Turns out it works great for hotels, too.Any vacation needs advance preparation, but the Speed Vacation needs blessedly less of it. Even better: With the high-speed Internet connection and shared laser printer many office workers have, you can do all the work from the comfort (?) of your cubicle in a few little spurts the boss shouldn't notice.
We tried the Yahoo Travel and Google engines searching for accommodations, and found them an exercise in frustration. Finding a town's prevailing hotel rates means looking at four or five hotels' sites, many of which suffer from the poor design so endemic on the Web. You could just plug your destination into Priceline and get the answer with a single button click. We'd recommend the latter.
Priceline listed hotels in Fort Collins and Loveland near our ultimate destination, Estes Park. The latter is a resort town and apparently doesn't need Priceline to help fill its unsold hotel rooms.
The going area hotel rate, according to both our cumbersome research and one click on Priceline, was $69 a night. We bid $45 a night and got it, making our two-night accommodations bill about $105 with taxes for a nice Courtyard by Marriott room in Fort Collins, with hot tub and pool on the premises. (Here's an explanation of bidding for hotel rooms.) Advantage: Priceline.
Getting There
Here's where the high-speed Internet connection and shared printer come in really handy. Use MapQuest or Yahoo! Maps to print yourself a map and turn-by-turn directions to the hotel. You're going to be punchy as all get out when you've combined a full day's work with hundreds of miles on the road. Sprint to the shared printer while you're fresh, and the resulting maps will make you feel a whole lot better around midnight in an unfamiliar city. While you're at it, print city-level maps for any place you might want to stop. You'll probably get to your destination's state welcome center too late to grab a free state map.Relax from the drive in the hot tub, shower off the chlorine before it burns holes in your skin, and hit the sack. You've got a big day ahead of you.
Day 1: Bagels, Snowshoeing, Cheap Gear and German Food
Rise early enough to make a beeline for Gib's New York Bagels (1112 Oakridge Dr., 970-223-5253), a nice chain with a shop conveniently located just 100 yards from the Fort Collins Courtyard by Marriott. A depressing array of places promise New York-style bagels; Gib's delivers. Not only are they crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside, they're served with a schmear of cream cheese that oozes out the sides. (Maybe that's why they hid the "Menu for a Healthy Heart" poster behind a couple of plants.)
While the food is good, we wouldn't recommend the espresso drinks. Service is slow, and the resulting beverages are decidedly underpowered. Go for the self-serve brewed coffee, in the usual flavor varieties.
Hit the road for the 41-mile drive to Estes Park. It's a beautiful trip, but slow going once you get into the mountains past Loveland. Allow plenty of time. In Estes Park, head for Estes Park Mountain Shop (358 East Elkhorn Ave., 970-586-6548, 800-504-6642), conveniently located at the beginning of a long Main Street-type row of shops, bars and restaurants. The Mountain Shop advertises the "Cheapest snowshoe rentals in Estes Park, or Rob wears a dress" at $10 a pair. Rental boots, if you didn't bring your own, are an extra five bucks. We've never needed the walking poles, but grab 'em if you want 'em. While at the rental desk be sure to check out the room behind it, where there's a jaw-dropping 30-foot indoor climbing wall. Twenty dollars for an all-day climb, all equipment included.
The Mountain Shop sometimes has astounding sales, such as $70 Lowe Alpine nylon travel/outdoor pants for $20. We felt good walking out with $210 worth of technical clothing for $60, although the experience once again confirmed our theory that the best sales are always on women's clothing. (Well, and men's clothing in sizes Elfin and Cave Troll.)
It's a lengthy drive to the Bear Lake trailhead inside Rocky Mountain National Park, so where to go for in-the-car sustenance? Why, the gas station, of course. Inside the unassuming B&B Food Mart is the Estes Deli & Catering Co. (Highway 7 and Woodstock, 1/2 mile south of the Highway 36/Highway 7 intersection, 970-586-5741), which offers enormous gourmet sandwiches. We found it thanks to an Estes Park Mountain Shop employee, who, we later found out, was dating a B&B Food Mart employee. We ask the guy, "Is there a Subway or Quizno's somewhere close by?" He leans real close, lowers his voice and says, "You want a really good sandwich?" We did, and Estes Deli & Catering Co. had them. One sandwich we tried was the Mediterranean Grilled Chicken -- grilled chicken breast, sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, kalamata olives, red onion, Parmesan and Mozzarella on French bread -- served hot for $6.49. Delicious, and more than enough left over for a post-snowshoeing snack. And they sell Dr. Brown's Black Cherry Soda, which makes any establishment high-class in our book.
The B&B Food Mart itself is a sight to behold. Besides the deli counter, it's got groceries, and ATM, a one-hour photo machine, video and DVD rentals and car rentals. All in a space not much larger than your average QuikTrip gas station.
You're already near Highway 36, so take it west to the Beaver Meadows Entrance Station at Rocky Mountain National Park. It's $15 per car for a day pass and $30 for an annual pass. Might as well get the annual pass, and give yourself an excuse to come back.
From there it's about 10 miles of beautiful mountain driving up to the Bear Lake parking lot, passing through a valley where in the afternoons you can sometimes see hundreds of elk. Watch out -- you yield to them, not the other way around.
There's a ranger station at the trailhead where you can ask questions, restrooms, and convenient log benches to sit on while putting on snowshoes. Just a short walk up the trail and you're at beautiful Bear Lake, which is usually frozen really, really solid. If in doubt, look for the multiple lines of tracks across the ice. You're safe. If the kids are along, Bear Lake's frozen surface is about the best place on the planet to make snow angels, especially during late-afternoon snow showers. An easy hike goes around Bear Lake, or you have your choice of trails, with varying levels of difficulty, leading generally to the west and the east. You'll have a great time; snowshoeing is no harder than walking like a duck.
You'll have worked up a hearty appetite after a day on the mountain, so after returning your snowshoes head back toward Loveland. Just before you get there, on the north side of the road, is the really brightly decorated and absolutely delicious Bohemian Cottage (8039 W. Highway 34, 970-667-3718). Call ahead for reservations, order the Chicken Paprikash (served with heavenly dumplings), enjoy multiple servings from the included huge tureen of homemade soup, ask hostess/waitress/co-owner Lucy about her native Czechoslovakia, and insist on a performance from cook/co-owner Henry -- who will sing and play his harmonica and guitar from a chair placed near the kitchen door, once he's finished pounding schnitzels. You have to check out the restroom, where everything is wallpapered -- including the ceiling, trash can and toilet brush stand. You will leave with a big smile, leftovers wrapped in foil with a foil-sculpted carrying handle, and wallets about $25 lighter per person.
Day 2: More Bagels, Cajun Breakfast, and Shopping in Boulder
You'll rise a little later on Day 2 before heading again to Gib's New York Bagels for breakfast (they're really that good). Then blaze a trail to Boulder, where the world-famous "breakfast for lunch" delights of Lucille's (2124 14th St., 303-442-4743). You'll know it from the crowd of people waiting on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, which fills the first floor and enclosed front porch of a historic house. Waits of 30 minutes or more are common, but the time flies as you strike up conversations with the locals desperate to tuck in to Lucille's paperback-book-sized biscuits and authentic New Orleans-style beignets (huge donuts sans holes, served under a deep blanket of powdered sugar). We've always ordered a la carte, getting the Cajun fried trout, mustard greens and grits; but regulars swear by the Eggs Jennifer (poached eggs peeking out from under mounds of spinach and avocado) and the Eggs Sardou (served with creamed spinach and shrimp). The fresh-squeezed orange juice is expensive, but worth it, and the coffee refills are endless. A former colleague of ours woke up one day after a lengthy drinking session to find himself stuffed in the backseat of his friends' car, on the way from Nebraska to Boulder just to satisfy a Lucille's craving. We've considered doing the same, while omitting the excessive night-before consumption of adult beverages.
After Lucille's you can while away the hours on the Pearl Street Mall, a pedestrians-only shopping district. With spic-and-span upkeep, a public restroom building in the middle that blasts classical music at you, and street performers ranging from a contortionist to a man in a shaggy-dog suit, it has the kind of charm that keeps you coming back. Try Peppercorn (1235 Pearl Street, 303-449-5847, 800-447-6905): 12,000 square feet of cooking gear and gourmet foods. An amateur cook can spend half an hour looking at just the first two display cases, drinking free coffee in tiny paper cups.
Some say the chain stores (like Abercrombie & Fitch, the Gap, Banana Republic, etc.) are edging out the independent shops, but we think there's a nice balance on one of the nicest pedestrian malls in America.
Hit the road for home, arriving in time to get just enough sleep to look semi-conscious at work the next day. You've just packed a week's vacation into a weekend. Enjoy your friends' jealousy, and start planning the next one.
