coffee, tacos, ski, sleep, repeat

February 16-23, 2018

With the Maiden Voyage under our belts, it was time to plan something bigger... something better... something much more grand. A ski road trip! I serendipitously had a week off during the month of February and the boyfriend, well... he's the boss... so it didn't require the pulling of too many strings to escape with me that same week. We had been planning out different potential routes for a while now. We had a northern route, a southern route, a western route and a what-the-heck-do-we-call-this-one route. Our idea was to choose the route with the best snow conditions closer to the actual week of departure. We were, after all, camping in the truck which eliminated the need to make any prior lodging reservations!

We finally agreed upon our northern route - ski conditions elsewhere were lackluster at best. This would lead us from Denver through Wyoming, into Montana, spend a minute in Idaho and then back to Wyoming before finishing our escapades safely (we hoped) back in Colorado. Our goal was to ski at four of the different resorts along the way, purchasing lift tickets as we went depending, again, on where the best snow was to be found each day. We packed enough coffee, breakfast tacos and sandwich ingredients to last a month, but decided each night to treat ourselves to a dinner in town. This would obviously satisfy our ravenous bellies after days of skiing, but also provide us time to explore each new town we were in. Every night we planned to hole up in the truck within the boundaries of the closest national forest - hoping... praying... doing weird tribal-like dances in hopes of warmer temperatures than last month's adventure provided. 

Alas... The car camping Gods must have thought it was a riot to bestow on us the COLDEST temperatures of the month for that week. The night of 3 degrees we experienced in Steamboat was sissy stuff compared to the negative temperatures that would be thrown our way very shortly. Take a deep breath though and know that my main man got me a zero degree bag, extra wide,  right before this trip! Good-bye High School piece-o-junk bag, hello beautiful sauna bag and hellooooo wonderful boyfriend. 

The route

We packed up the Yukon and left in no big hurry Friday morning. We had a solid eight and a half hours of driving to do to get through the state of Wyoming, so we had taken our sweet time getting out of bed, making sure to let all those good hours of sleep sink in. We drove forever through the flat lands of Wyoming while Forest took a beating from the bully winds that whipped across the highway. We were energized and eager to make it to our first destination so we didn't even stop for lunch. I just crawled into the back of the truck and made sandwiches on top of the cooler - quite a handy set-up.

We made it across the border to Red Lodge, Montana by early evening and were greeted by a skittish coyote and some roaming elk. Red Lodge is an absolutely darling town that is nestled into the base of a few small mountains. The landscape seemed to erupt into peaks and valleys the second we crossed over the Montana border, leaving the dreary plains to windy Wyoming. An old mining town, Red Lodge has a small main street area with some great restaurants and shops. The buildings all have that old Western flare and the early 1900's houses are beautifully kept up. We were even lucky enough to spot the local wandering wild turkeys that prowl the streets of town. That night we parked just outside of town in Towne Gulch and enjoyed a cozy sleep, although quite windy, at a lovely 15 degrees. We thought this was a grand sign that eluded to promises of mild and manageable temperatures for the rest of the week. We should not have been so quick to get our hopes up though... The cold front was rolling in, and fast.