5th trip

Our First Trip to Colorado

22.07.2018 | by T.С. | Leave a comment

Avon and Beaver Creek

We took a week-long trip to Col­orado to escape the Ari­zona heat. Although it was sum­mer, we decid­ed to rent an all-wheel-dri­ve vehi­cle. We chose a Jeep Grand Chero­kee. Usu­al­ly, when we rent a car, we go to the air­port, because there is a much larg­er selec­tion than in small loca­tions in the city. For each long trip (espe­cial­ly in win­ter), we typ­i­cal­ly rent a car, as we don’t own an all-wheel-dri­ve vehi­cle. If you’re inter­est­ed in our thoughts on rental cars (in this case, the Jeep), let us know in the com­ments, and I’ll ask Levi to add to the story.

avon

We real­ly enjoyed the state of Col­orado. At the entrance, there was a sign: “Wel­come to the Col­or­ful State of Col­orado”. And it tru­ly was col­or­ful. At first, the moun­tains had lit­tle veg­e­ta­tion, with a mix of green­ish-blue hues like cop­per sul­fate. Then they turned lemon-yel­low and con­tin­ued to change from sandy to red, like in Sedona, becom­ing increas­ing­ly cov­ered with green­ery. One of the first towns in Col­orado where we stopped was Grand Junc­tion. A small, well-kept town (most towns in Amer­i­ca are small), with veg­e­ta­tion very sim­i­lar to what we have in Ros­tov, but with­out the oppres­sive heat that cur­rent­ly dom­i­nates Ros­tov. It was only 23 – 25 degrees at 4 PM. Even the poplars, which Valya dis­likes due to the fluff, amazed her. And there was no fluff on the streets; either the poplars had already fin­ished bloom­ing, or it was a spe­cial vari­ety. The grass­es were all famil­iar and lush. After a short stop in Grand Junc­tion, we drove through the most beau­ti­ful canyon to our hotel in Avon.

Avon is also a small but mod­ern tourist town, locat­ed just five min­utes from Beaver Creek, one of the top ten ski resorts in Col­orado. In 2015, the World Ski Cham­pi­onships were held here.

Avon is a rel­a­tive­ly young town, just 40 years old. It has numer­ous hotels, bars, and shops cater­ing to tourists. The town offers free trans­porta­tion (three bus routes). It feels quite unusu­al. All pas­sen­gers say “thank you” as they get off. The town’s life revolves around serv­ing Beaver Creek, which hosts lux­u­ri­ous, expen­sive hotels and res­i­dences, along with under­ground park­ing. Con­ve­nient free pub­lic under­ground park­ing, plus many lifts to the high-alti­tude trails.

Beaver Creek trans­lates to “beaver creek.” Indeed, there is a small riv­er flow­ing in this area, along with many streams and a lake. This is not just a ski resort; there’s some­thing to do here year-round. I noticed a lot of par­ents with chil­dren. For sum­mer activ­i­ties, numer­ous hik­ing trails, horse­back rid­ing, bik­ing, fish­ing, and golf are avail­able. In the cen­ter of Beaver Creek, sum­mer ice skat­ing is orga­nized in the evenings. In the parks, you can enjoy music right on the lawn. Dur­ing one of our walks around Beaver Creek, it was delight­ful to hear an Amer­i­can band play­ing the tune “Dark Eyes,” with every­one on the lawn applauding.

Wyndham

We stayed at a “vaca­tion home” (I think this is the clos­est trans­la­tion for vaca­tion homes) Wyn­d­ham in Avon. This isn’t a typ­i­cal hotel; it’s a Time­share.

“Time­share” means “shared own­er­ship of a vaca­tion home,” so a per­son who pays a cer­tain amount of mon­ey becomes a co-own­er of a prop­er­ty in a spe­cial net­work of vaca­tion homes. You can vis­it, for exam­ple, once a year (depend­ing on the agree­ment), stay­ing in the same unit or some­times in dif­fer­ent ones. But these aren’t ordi­nary hotel rooms; I’ll explain the dif­fer­ence below. I think when this “ser­vice” was cre­at­ed, the idea was to bring togeth­er trav­el enthu­si­asts in a kind of club with spe­cif­ic con­di­tions, so guests would feel at home. This time­share sys­tem is wide­spread in Amer­i­ca, and major hotel chains (Mar­riott, Hyatt, Hilton, Wyn­d­ham) have their own time­shares. They dif­fer in the num­ber of vaca­tion homes, ini­tial and month­ly fees, liv­ing con­di­tions, num­ber of vis­its per year, etc.

The cost of all this isn’t small.

  1. First, the ini­tial fee is quite high; on aver­age (since the amount varies sig­nif­i­cant­ly), buy­ing on the pri­ma­ry mar­ket, the first year of own­er­ship costs $20,000.
  2. Sec­ond­ly, month­ly (main­te­nance) and some­times annu­al fees are also con­sid­er­able, and they increase almost every year; you nev­er know how much you’ll pay next year!
  3. And third (and most impor­tant­ly) — the con­tract is for life. It can­not be ter­mi­nat­ed. If some­thing changes in your life and you can no longer afford it or no longer need mem­ber­ship — you have to resell it on the sec­ondary mar­ket for a much low­er amount than you ini­tial­ly paid — and this is the only way out. You can, of course, ter­mi­nate the con­tract through the courts, and there are lawyers who spe­cial­ize in this, but who wants to get involved in that if you can just sell it? Of course, there’s no guar­an­tee it will sell imme­di­ate­ly, but such an oppor­tu­ni­ty does exist.

This is the only thing (and the ini­tial fee 🙂 ) that stops my kids from buy­ing a time­share, because they like every­thing else about it.

Although Wyn­d­ham is a fair­ly large chain in Amer­i­ca, mem­bers don’t always fill the hotels, and time­shares are forced to sell rooms to main­tain their net­work. Of course, they pri­or­i­tize their own mem­bers, but for reg­u­lar peo­ple like us, they list them on third-par­ty sites like Expe­dia or Vrbo. Mar­riott also sells its time­shares, while AIRBnB offers a wide selec­tion of time­shares, homes, and apart­ments that are rent­ed out by the own­ers.

The rooms dif­fer from reg­u­lar ones pri­mar­i­ly in that they have full-sized kitchens (not just a tiny microwave and a half-sized fridge, but like at home), com­plete with all appli­ances, a large fridge with a spa­cious freez­er, and wash­er and dry­er. You can quick­ly pre­pare break­fast, lunch, or what­ev­er you like — and that’s why we love stay­ing in time­shares. We bring a portable cool­er with sev­er­al con­tain­ers of frozen home­made meals, veg­eta­bles, fruits, etc. It’s so con­ve­nient for us. We heat it up, have break­fast or lunch, and don’t have to wait at restau­rants for our food to be served (plus, we cook much bet­ter and tasti­er than many of the local restau­rants!). There are also wash­er and dry­er. After our out­ings, we washed every­thing, so we returned home with clean clothes. The kids rent­ed a two-bed­room unit (two bed­rooms, two bath­rooms with toi­lets). The hotel had under­ground park­ing, a hot tub, a bil­liards table, and grills. Some Amer­i­cans don’t like rent­ing time­shares because there’s no dai­ly house­keep­ing, but we actu­al­ly pre­fer it. Tak­ing the trash out to the floor is no trou­ble at all.