Anticipation…45 Days
By Mike & Darlene Jordan
For those of you who are reading this column for the first time, this is a column about travel—travel around the world, around the country, and around Colorado. We are travel agents, so we try to go as many places as possible (and that we can afford) so we can know more about the business that we are in and the places that we send people.
We’ve been on more than 20 cruises on every major contemporary cruise line. We’ve visited more than 25 foreign countries and most of the 50 states and their many national and state parks, including Alaska and Hawaii, and we’ve done it by air, train, ship, and car.
Well…bully for us. We only bring all of that up to say that, as much as we’ve travelled, we never fail to be excited for and count the days until our next trip. To us, travel is never mundane or boring, although much of the shine has worn off of air travel over the past few years. Still, the flight isn’t the destination, it’s just how you get there.
When we have a trip planned, we’re like two kids waiting for Christmas. If they had Advent calendars for journeys, we’d be opening the little doors and windows every day. We really do count the days until our next trip—and not the number of days till we get to our destination, it’s the number of days until we leave the house for the airport!
45 days from today we’ll be loading up the car and heading for Denver International Airport to begin our long journey to mainland China.
Going to China is a major ordeal, but one we’re glad to endure. It’s a long flight (see paragraph 3, above), there are visas to obtain, currency to buy (the Yuan Renminbi @ 6.82755 per U.S. dollar), packing etc, and we love every minute. OK, maybe not the ironing—but definitely all of the rest of the minutes.
Obtaining a visa to China is a somewhat scary thing. It involves sending the only copies of our most prized possessions, our passports, off to Washington D.C. and hoping they will return, unscathed, in time for the trip.
As soon as we return from China, we’ll start counting the days until the next one.
Then it will be 141 days until we begin a trip that is, for all intents and purposes, a business meeting. Yes, we’ll visit places we’ve been before, yes, we’ll be inside in meetings while other passengers will be out sunning at the pool, taking pilates and spinning classes, walking or jogging on the deck, and doing all of the other fun cruise stuff. But it will be aboard a brand new ship, the Norwegian Epic, that doesn’t even have its maiden voyage until July. It will still have that “new ship smell!”
The point is, travel offers something to look forward to. There’s plenty of research that has shown that having an event to look forward too can lengthen life spans and promote a positive attitude, while the trip itself takes away life’s frustrations, help achieve relaxation, avoid high blood pressure and, to borrow a phrase from Mike’s musical partner, it’ll make you grin!
Plan a trip. Savor it. Study it. Look forward to it!
Til next time…get out the map!
Archive for March, 2010
Get Out the Map!
March 19, 2010Mt. Princeton Hot Springs
March 13, 2010By Mike & Darlene Jordan
Neither of us are ones who regret, avoid, or dread birthdays. That’s because, as many of our readers know, we give each other a secret birthday trip every year; and last week it was Mike’s turn.
Most of the time, the trips are Colorado driving trips and this year Mike’s surprise was a 3-night visit to the Mt. Princeton Hot Springs on Chaffee County Road 162 near Buena Vista.
We’ve driven by the turnoff from Highway 285 a number of times, and each time one of us has commented about heading up that road someday—primarily with an eye to climbing the impressive, 14,197’ Mt. Princeton.
Darlene had made the reservation for the Hot Springs resort on the phone and was uncertain as to what we’d find when we got there. Both of us were very pleasantly surprised. Mt. Princeton Hot Springs is nestled right up to the base of Mt. Princeton and the imposing Chalk Cliffs, visible from Highway 285, tower above the resort just to the west. It’s made up of a fairly large complex of buildings including an office/restaurant building, several newly built log cabins, motel-style buildings, conference center and, of course, the hot springs pools. We had a room in the Cliffside building and, since it was off-season, were virtually the building’s only occupants until Friday when the place began to fill for the weekend.
The weather was gorgeous. The view from the patio of our room faced directly south so we had full sun for the entire day, and had to resist the temptation to just sit out there and bask in the sun for the whole afternoon with views of Mt. Princeton and 14,269’ Mt. Antero right out our back door. However, snoopers that we are, we decided to head even farther up CR 162 to see what we could see.
As it turns out, there’s a lot to see. The road was slushy in places, but easily passable as we wound our way several miles back into the forest past closer views of the Chalk Cliffs, stopping for a short hike to Agnes Vaille Falls, and as far as St. Elmo, a ghost town that’s now privately owned, but features some shops and restaurants and a very cute bed and breakfast inn that were closed for the season.
The best part of the weekend, though, was soaking in the luxurious hot springs pools at the Mt. Princeton resort. There are several pools—a hot (104 degrees) soaking pool, a larger and somewhat cooler (95) lap pool, a large pool with water slide (closed for the season), and a number of small pools formed by rocks on the banks of nearby Chalk Creek for a more natural setting. None were particularly crowded, being off-season, and staring up at the crystal clear night sky from the warmth of the hot water was heavenly.
The biggest surprise was the restaurant. Wow…we’re very picky when it comes to places to eat, but Mt. Princeton’s restaurant is first class; by far the best we’ve experienced in the Salida/Buena Vista area. The food was excellent! We had one dinner and 3 breakfasts there. The service was wonderful, menu choices plentiful, and there’s very nice wine list; all reasonably priced and served in a very classy dining room complete with stone fireplace.
If we’ve learned anything on our trips around Colorado, it’s that this state has too much to see to take the quick way home, if you can help it. In this state, the shortest distance between two points may be a straight line, but taking the round-about way is sooo much better. True to form, our two hour drive home became a six hour journey as we headed east on Highway 24 toward Cripple Creek (where we had spent the day before), then South on Colorado Highway 9 past the historic town of Guffy (a place we’ll return to when the weather gets warmer), toward Canon City, then even farther out of the way past the eastern slopes of the Sangre de Cristos on Highway 69 to Westcliff, where we had a terrific lunch at a little Uruguayan eatery called Cel Dor Asado. The food there (even the bread) is cooked on a grill with a huge open fire, and it made our long, winding trip home well worth it.
No, birthdays aren’t something to dread. They are something we’ve come to look forward to and enjoy, even if one of us has no idea where we’re going.
Until next time, Get Out the Map!
Contact Mike & Darlene by calling 800-267-7613 or by email at cruisesinc@gojade.org, or visit their website, www.cruisesinc.com/mjordan
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