Gateway, Colorado + Reno, Nevada
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ulu is obsessed with her night walks. She is spending the pandemic in Florida with her parents, in a very walkable, very serene neighborhood. She goes for hour plus long walks while on the phone with her best friend. This is a new habit that she will be doing for as long as she's stuck quarantining. Alison is obsessed with her new clean and updated bathroom. They have been updating the house and backyard during their quarantine time, and Alison finally has the bathroom of her dreams. Ish.
Lulu is wanting to get supplies from Who Gives A Crap. They have paper products and toilet paper made from sustainable materials, and they donate 50% of their profits to organizations providing toilets and sanitation efforts across the world. Their profit-with-purpose model is something Lulu can get behind! Alison is wishing for a massage, who knows when this wish will come true!
Alison is heading to western Colorado to be surrounded by nature’s most impressive creations at the equally impressive Gateway Canyons Resort, rated #10 Top U.S. Resort Condé Nast Traveler Readers’ Choice Awards in 2019 as well as among the top hotels and resorts for families Travel + Leisure World’s Best Awards in 2017. That’s right, she’s taking her family of four on a much needed vacation. She rents a Jeep 4 Door from Enterprise, so that they can get to all the places she’s hoping to hit on this outdoor adventure. She has booked the resorts “Signature Stargazer Casita”, which features a second floor den, a private patio with fire-pit and hot tub, an outdoor shower, and a free-stading soaker tub in the master bathroom. The booking includes breakfast, lunch and dinner for two daily, plus adult beverages or soft drinks with every meal! Special activities such as stargazing, private s'mores & cowboy stories, outdoor group exercise programs, and more are also available to guests!
Self-guided hiking experiences are charted on maps for guests of Gateway Canyons Resort to use. With national forests surrounding the area, there is some beautiful scenery to take in!
Instead, Alison decides to take her family a little further out, heading to well-renowned Arches National Park, a wonderland of red rock formations in the neighboring state of Utah. There are over 2,000 rock formations in Arches, so you will see something different no matter how many times you go! Also, if you stay for a sunset, you won’t be disappointed.
Drive time: 2 hours from Gateway Canyons Resort (west)
Brunch is at Abejas, named in Denver's Westword as one of their favorite restaurants in Denver. But Alison is in Gateway, not Denver, and this restaurant is in Golden, Colorado, right outside Denver, about 4 hours from Gateway on a day with no traffic. Oh well, that Jeep is going to be getting some serious use. Alison and her crew are ordering omelettes, french toast, bangers and mash, avocado tomato eggs benedict, and lots of coffee and mimosas (for the adults, of course).
After brunch it's back to Utah to discover Canyonlands National Park. There are four sections to the park, divided by the Colorado River, each could take days to explore! The four sections are: Island in the Sky, the Needles, the Maze, and the actual river and tributaries.
Drive time: 2.5 hours from Gateway Canyons Resort (southwest)
Mesa Verde National Park in the southwestern part of Colorado is dedicated to preserving the history of the Pueblo peoples, so in addition to visiting a national park, you get to take in over 5,000 archeological sites around the park!
Drive time: 3.5 hours from Gateway Canyons Resort (south)
Unaweep Canyon is unique and beautiful, and perhaps most notable is that it is the only canyon in the world with creeks flowing in opposite directions!
Drive time: 15 minutes from Gateway Canyons Resort (east)
Reading about Ways to Get DIrty in Gateway, Colorado, Alison decides she likes the sound of panning for gold. Good, dirty, family fun! This article doesn’t give an exact location to do this, so Alison does a quick google search to find Argo Mill…in Idaho Springs, Colorado. This is back towards Denver, so 4 hours from Gateway Canyons Resort.
Back to hotel for their included meal at Paradox Grill. For the four of them they order the BBQ Pork Quesadilla, the Maple Leaf Farms Duck Breast, a Grilled New York strip steak, one order of the Cowboy Pork Chop with Tomato Bacon Jam, and an order of Bison Short Ribs...basically all the meats, plus some desserts and drinks.
One last thing, after all that hiking, or the literal 33 hours sitting in a Jeep, rather, Alison heads for an 80-minute CBD Recovery and Healing Massage and a Foot Focus Massage at Gateway Canyons' Spa. This excursion is just for her. Earned it!
Lulu foregoes the luxury for the unique with her stay at Edith Palmer’s Country Inn, a quaint bed and breakfast about thirty minutes south of Reno in Virginia City. She books the "Marilyn Room", named so after Marilyn Monroe stayed there while filming The Misfits.
Breakfast is at Peg’s Glorified Ham and Eggs with several locations in and around Reno, there are plenty of opportunities for you to indulge in "glorified" breakfast food, like Peg’s Glorified Full Pound Ham Steak & Eggs topped with caramelized bananas. Curious? Us too.
To really get her day started, Lulu is going to float the Truckee River. For a successful river float you need to bring the following:
Raft and Cooler - Lulu’s pick: Inflatable Canopy Raft with floating cooler
Bag to hold your stuff - Lulu’s pick: Wet Products Shoulder Strap Beach Mesh Bag
Boozy Beverages - Lulu’s pick: Reno’s Lead Dog Brewing’s Local Lager
Water Bottle - Lulu’s pick: Ocean Bottle made from recycled materials
Swimwear - Lulu’s pick: LinenShed Linen Night Gown and Jockey "Skimmies" Wicking Slip Shorts
Music - Lulu’s pick: Demerbox’s DB2 Bluetooth Speaker and the trekpak
Next Lulu heads to the National Bowling Stadium. Referred to as the "Taj Mahal of Tenpins", this huge space is reserved for tournaments, you can't just walk in and request a lane for a casual evening of bowling. In an imaginary world, however, Lulu is going to gain entrance and get to live out a bowling-adjacent fantasy in just a few steps:
Buy more of the DemerBox DB2 Bluetooth speakers, you can connect them to each other, you see.
Buy six of these retro bowling shirts with the team name “10K Tenpins” embroidered on the pocket!
Hire 5 dancers.
In as simple as 1-2-3 she is ready to reenact the Score Tonight number from Grease 2!
To cap off her day of excursions, Lulu is headed to the El Dorado Casino, for their bottomless whiskey nights at their NoVi nightclub. After imbibing all the whiskey, Lulu dons an earlier purchase of Lucchese "Romia" Crocodile Cowboy Boots to join in on an evening of line dancing. Ever the responsible shoe lover, Lulu also purchased boot hooks and a boot bag. And added an impulse buy of the bootmaker’s smoke-scented candle.
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