Bonjour Colorado

Vail Summer Fun: Enjoying the Ford Legacy Amidst Blooms and Tunes

Upper Alpine Pools and Aspen Trees at Betty Ford Alpine Gardens

Our mountain meadows and towns blossom into wondrous playgrounds almost as soon as the snow melts here in the Rockies.

It’s not always easy, however, to hike up to high alpine pastures to marvel at our summertime display of wildflowers. Even if we do, there’s little chance we could delight in the beauty of the mountain flora while being serenaded by a world-class orchestra. Yet this midsummer scenario is possible in the city of Vail.

BFAG Alpine Rock Garden

Such was the case one morning recently when I strolled into the Betty Ford Alpine Gardens, a carefully crafted celebration of the beauty and diversity of alpine flora, open daily from sunrise to sunset, from snowmelt to snowfall, for all to see. Experiencing the gentle waterfalls, alpine ponds and rock gardens of this colorful site would have pleased me immensely on its own. But lucky me. Both times I meandered through these gardens and the nearby trails of Ford Park, I was wooed by the sound of music, the sound of the Philadelphia Orchestra to be exact. The butterflies—along with my step—appeared to bounce sprightly from flower bed to flower bed with each new stanza.

I quickly learned that the orchestra was rehearsing in the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater, a marvelous outdoor venue, located next to the Betty Ford Alpine Gardens. This little prelude prompted me to rearrange my schedule in order to attend an evening performance, one of many musical events put on by the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival through August 3rd.

I traded my sportswear and flip flops for a flouncy skirt and top and went hand in hand to the concert with my hunny who was also smartly dressed. And thank goodness we were. What a chic congregation! We both agreed that this is where we saw one of the greatest concentrations of tony folk—all fit, tanned and well turned out—in the Rockies. Most were of un certain age, which to us dispelled our previously held notion that you don’t see many older people in the mountains. (Really you don’t but if you’re going to see a good show of them, it’s likely to be at one of the many culturally- or intellectually-stimulating events that take place in Aspen and Vail during the summer.)

Bravo! at the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater

The scene was perfectly charming. We bobbed between avid outdoor concert goers who clearly knew a thing or two about picnic-ing en élégance. (I spotted one golden-crusted quiche delicately dished out with a silver server by an attractive picnic goer.) The venue’s wine concession impressed me the most though. Never before had I seen such a variety of bottles served up so efficiently—complete with plastic wine bucket and glasses—for guests to bring back to their seats, both on the lawn and within the amphitheater. Grande classe. Truly this was not a popcorn and soda crowd, although these snacks sell here as well.

Phillie's View from the Stage

The notes from the concert continued to dance blissfully in our heads as we strolled out of the Ford Park on this beautiful summer’s eve. The vibrant, whimsical scene at the Betty Ford Alpine Gardens complemented the sophisticated setting of the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater to a T.

And throughout, the magnificent Rocky mountains stood as the backdrop for all.

One Sweet Boutique

Ford Park is located at the east end of Vail off Gore Creek Drive.

Know that the Vail International Dance Festival holds many of its performances at the Gerald Ford Amphitheater from July 27th through August 10th as well.

Don’t miss the Betty Ford Alpine Gardens Gift Shops.  The Schoolhouse at Betty Ford Alpine Gardens is open daily from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Visit this adorable old structure for a harvest of gift items, all on the garden theme. Their Alpine Treasures in-town gift shop in Vail Village is open year-round.

Oh Château Life!

A Perfect French Summer Scene: Colza Fields Blanketing the Château de la Motte d'Usseau Landscape

If you’ve caught any coverage of the Tour de France, you’ve seen some glorious shots of the French countryside dotted with fairy tale-looking castles and elegant manor houses.  Families still live in most of these impressive dwellings, many of whom have lived there for centuries.  And even better, some of these families of long lineage open up their stately residences to visitors on a nightly or even weekly basis. (Yes, you can easily rent your own château in France for your destination wedding, family reunion or other exciting event.)

Château du Fraisse, A Grand Property Near Limoges

But how do you go about connecting with these people, some of whom may be just familiarizing themselves with the Internet?  Enter Diane Ohanian, French château expert par excellence.  Diane created au Château some ten years ago, a company and e-newsletter that dials Americans into château life in France.  In my Travel Fun interview with Diane (and through her au Château Web site and newsletter), I’ve found her to be an incredible resource on French châteaux and on French life in general.  As an ardent Francophile for more than two decades, Diane has made it her mission to suss out some of the most glorious and welcoming abodes in the gallic land.  Indeed au Château is a great English-language resource for travelers looking to stay in historic places.

Room with a View at Château Sallandrouze and Many Other Châteaux

Click on the play button below to hear what Diane has to say about château life in France, French hosts and what she appreciates most about life in France.  Hint:  it has nothing to do with traffic jams and fast food.
 

Three châteaux have been featured in the above images including Château de la Motte d’Usseau, Château du Fraisse and Château Sallandrouze.  (For Château Sallandrouze, please check with Diane directly at inquiry@au-chateau.com for this property’s availability.)  Note that au Château boasts nearly eighty members on their site, so you have a variety of experiences to chose from in every corner of France.

Diane (on the left) with One of Her Hosts

Diane on the French as Hosts

“They’re excellent hosts, warm and friendly.  The nobility is nice, too.  Not at all condescending.  I hope it’s not a disappointment when they (travelers) find out that they (the noble families) are like everyone else.”

Book Pick

“The Paris Neighborhood Cookbook:  Danyel Couet’s Guide to the City’s Ethnic Cuisines,” by Danyel Couet and David Loftus

Listen to what Diane has to say about this book in the above interview.

Come to Colorado for Cowboys and Way More

T-ride's Town Park: the Quintessential Summer Festival Setting

Summer has popped here in Colorado propelling the season into a solid start. I wrote over a month ago in a previous post about how I attended two major tourism industry events last fall: one for France, one for Colorado. The mood at both gatherings was one of cautious optimism, although I’m sure the French nervosité about their tourism outlook was partly masked by the generous amounts of wine served throughout their program. It seems as though travel to these two fabulous destinations is shaping up nicely, perhaps even better than the travel industry experts might have hoped last fall.

I had a chance to schmooze with many of the movers and shakers from the Colorado travel world at the annual conference of the Colorado Hotel & Lodging Association (CHLA) last November which took place at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, our Rocky Mountain state’s premiere property. As with French Affairs ’09, I only attended the social events of this meeting, get-togethers—both casual and high-brow (yes, even in Colorado)—that allowed many opportunities for networking and idea sharing among some of the top hoteliers in the state. I had just returned from the French travel industry event in New York City, so my desire to draw comparisons was sharper than ever. (If you’ve read this blog some, you know that France and Colorado are often my two frames of references, odd as that may seem!) Resulting verdict: the Coloradans’ professionalism—along with the food and wine they serve at their travel industry events—rivals the level of excellence associated with French hospitality.

Better yet, the notion of friendly service seemed to be emphasized even more at the CHLA event. Perhaps that was largely due to the fact that Karyn Ruth White, motivational comedian/author, kicked off the conference with a stand up routine, entitled Laughing in the Face of Stress for Service Professionals. She delivered a very funny, very real look at the pressures, demands and frustrations that come with working in the customer service field. Karyn Ruth emphasizes the importance of “humortunities,” opportunities for injecting humor into stressful and unpleasant situations. We shuffled off to the Wild, Wild West reception, chuckling about the often craziness of travel and how we—as both travelers and travel professionals—would fare better if we approached certain happenings and encounters with more levity.

I think I’ll try some of Karyn Ruth’s recommendations on the French next time I travel to Paris or the provinces. There must be a clever way of laughing off “Ce n’est pas possible, madame.” Listen to the podcast of an interview I did with Karyn Ruth for lots of laughs.

Here in Telluride, we’re in full festival mode. Like most of the other Rocky Mountain towns, festivals dominate our summer scene. But in T-ride, we’re king of the festivals, many of which have been taking place for well over three decades. The Telluride Bluegrass Festival drew near record-breaking numbers last weekend, ringing in the beginning of summer with four days of extraordinary music, good fun and irrepressible sunshine. This weekend it’s Telluride Wine Festival’s turn, then the Plein Air Festivals in Telluride and Aspen are up.  And the happy beat goes on—as throughout most of Colorado—all the way until the end of September.

No wonder so many people come here to vacation in the summer. And you might have thought we’re just all about cowboys, hikers and hippies. Thankfully we have them, too, but we also have a culture and sophistication that rivals most European destinations.

This is actually a good part of the reason I live here.

Colorado Hotel & Lodging Association, ColoradoLodging.com; contact them to receive your complimentary copy of the Summer Vacation Planner.

Thank you to Merrick Chase, from Telluride Photography, for the photos that accompany this story.  You can purchase images of Colorado and more from Merrick’s site, TelluridePhotography.net.

A Sultry Summer Scene in Colorado

Vive le Plein Air

Capturing Our Rocky Mountain Landscape

The leaves have popped here in southwestern Colorado within the past ten days and it has felt like full-on summer since last Friday.  We’ve been transported from a long, bleak period into a lush, green season as fast as you can paint a scene.  The rivers and streams course between and within our mountains, creating a thunderous soundtrack throughout the land; our bright, sunny days are melting the snowpack at twice the usual rate. Today on my walk I spotted my first lupines of the year, tall bushy blooms with purply-colored flowers hanging thick on the stalks like grapes on a vine.

When I interviewed Ronnie Palamar, director of the Sheridan Opera House in Telluride, a few weeks ago for my Travel Fun radio show, the summer season seemed light years away.  Now it’s nearly upon us (officially) and what a great season it is for outdoor painting. The Impressionists were particularly consumed with the effects of changing light on color outside.  Pissarro, Manet, Monet, Degas and others took to setting up their canvases en plein air, or in the open air, creating some of the finest pieces of the Impressionist movement.

The striking scenery of Colorado, with its often dramatic interplay of light, provides the perfect setting for painting in plein air, especially during the summer when the days are plenty warm for standing outside at great length.  Plein air festivals have taken the country by storm in recent years, some of which originated on the coasts.  The Telluride Plein Air festival, modeled after the Carmel festival and created by the Sheridan Arts Foundation, is certainly the best known in the Rockies.  And now this year this terrific celebration of the arts is also establishing itself in Aspen in conjunction with the Sheridan Opera House and Aspen’s Wheeler Opera House.

Painting on Telluride's Main Street

Most of the works on view and for sale in both of these festivals are painted sur place, or on the premises, the week prior to the official festival opening.  For me, that’s the best part of this event; I love seeing the artists—some thirty painters in Telluride—set up their easels around town and in the surrounding area at all hours of the day and night.  Indeed there’s a certain romanticism about it all and fortunately the artists don’t seem to mind if we peek over their shoulders and perhaps even ask them a question or two.

Both the Telluride Plein Air and the Aspen Plein Air festivals are marked by exhibitions and demonstrations that are great fun to attend even if you’re not shopping for a treasure.  Be sure to check out the Quick Draw Competitions where artists must complete an on-site painting within only ninety minutes. Now that’s what I call a showdown.

The Historic Sheridan Opera House

Click on the play button below to hear Ronnie talk about the historic Sheridan Opera House in Telluride and also the seventh annual Telluride Plein Air and the first annual Aspen Plein Air festivals.  She tells some wonderful anecdotes about the artists that you won’t want to miss.

Telluride Plein Air, June 28-July 4

Aspen Plein Air, July 6-July 10

Photo Notes

The top photo features Niles Norquist painting in Telluride.  Niles will be returning to the Telluride Plein Air Festival this year.

“Home of the Ski Bum” below was painted by Wayne Mckenzie, a local artist that will be featured at both the Telluride and Aspen Plein Air festivals.  Ronnie recounts his story in the above interview.

If you’d like to host an artist in Telluride or Aspen during these festivals, contact Ronnie at ronnie@sheridanoperahouse.com. That’s a wonderful way to support the arts for which you’ll even receive a painting as a special thank you. Commissioned pieces may also be arranged for particular scenes; contact Ronnie for those enquiries as well.

Home of the Ski Bum

Brand New Me

Plastic Mania at MountainFilm

My life is forever changed. From now on I will live every day in a more conscious manner in an effort to break myself of the plastic addiction that I have clearly been suffering from for the better part of my life. I will approach every aspect of my life—from a beauty product purchase to how I deal with recyclables—with a new awareness about how my actions effect the world, my health and the health and well being of those around me. I embrace this brand new me and hope you’ll come along with me on this journey.

I’ve considered myself a green person for quite some time. I think I first began to recycle when I moved to Paris in 1984. There was a glass recycling receptacle on every street corner which made it easy to adopt good practices of sorting garbage. When I moved back to the States over ten years later, recycling was in full swing yet I still had to make the effort to load up my car to drop off my recyclables at a recycling center a few miles away. In the beginning I thought my other environmentally aware efforts bordered on compulsive or at the very least quirky: rinsing Saran wrap, Ziploc bags and foil and then hanging them out to dry a gazillion times over, cutting open tubes of cream and the like to scrape out the last remaining bit of product, you get the idea. Other habits such as covering a dish with a plate in the fridge (instead of plastic wrap) just seemed to implement a dose of common sense. And in the past couple of years in addition to living a very simple life that involves limited travel (yes, it’s true, especially in cars) and minimal waste of any kind, I’ve been careful to cart my own water bottle along with my personal supply of shopping bags whenever I leave my home. At least most of the time.

After having seen the movie “Bag It” this past weekend at MountainFilm here in Telluride, I realized that none of the above has been nearly good enough. It answered the question that most of us dare not think about: Where does all this plastic go anyway? It does not just go away. It is polluting ourselves and our world in more ways than you could imagine. Filmmaker and Telluride local Suzan Beraza takes us on a marvelous journey from our pristine mountain town to the floating “island” of plastic and other debris swirling around in the north Pacific gyre, estimated to be more than twice the size of Texas. The story is told through another Tellurider, Jeb Berrier, our resident thespian and funnyman, who relates this grim tale with well-proportioned doses of humor, wit and intelligence. The human factor rises exponentially when a major event in Jeb’s personal life forces him to look even more closely at the effects of plastic in our world. “Bag It” is indisputably the most entertaining and moving documentary I’ve ever seen. It has informed and motivated me enough to want to really make a difference in my life and hopefully to spread that message to others through this blog, my own example and my Travel Fun radio show. (I’ll be having Suzan on as a guest sometime soon—she has some great green travel tips as well!)

This is the kind of information, inspiration and yes, hope you get at MountainFilm. It’s more than a film festival. It’s an extraordinary four-day happening also filled with art exhibits, book signings, student workshops, social gatherings and presentations by outstanding adventurers, leaders and keen observers from a variety of realms. It’s about celebrating the indomitable spirit of all while calling attention to what is possible in the world. I was blown away by the opening day symposium that tackled extinction, a problem we now face at an alarming rate. The biosphere is hanging in a delicate balance and only we can bring about that change.  (Consuming less energy would certainly help to create that shift for example. Did you know that plastic bags and bottles are made of fossil fuels such as petroleum and natural gas?)

Stimulating Conversations Galore at MountainFilm

Since it’s MountainFilm, I was also awed by movies of great mountain adventure such as “The Wildest Dream,” the tale of George Mallory’s obsession with Mt. Everest and Conrad Anker’s obsession with Mallory. Another outdoor exploit took me to the Kamchatka peninsula in the Russian Far East in the film “Eastern Rises,” an entertaining documentary about the fly fishing trip-of-a-lifetime for a group of funny dudes.

Conrad Anker (rt) and His Climbing Partner, Leo, on the Summit of Everest

“I am,” the film by Hollywood heavyweight Tom Shadyac, also greatly moved me. As with many of the other films in the festival it provided insight into how one can truly achieve happiness in our culture of consumption and how we can be more connected to the world we live in. Both “I am” and “Bag It” received the Audience Choice Award for Favorite Film at MountainFilm 2010. Click on the above links to see trailers of these memorable films, many of which may be purchased on DVD and/or viewed in a theater near you in the upcoming months.  Note that “I am” is so hot-off-the-press that there’s not yet a Web site for it.

There's Something for Everyone at MountainFilm

I must wrap this up now since I have much work to do. In addition to the usual, I now have to do things such as figure out how I can dispose of my garbage without using plastic bags and yes, even whip up a batch of yogurt since none of the ones available to me are sold in recyclable containers. (Apparently making yogurt at home is super easy.) Plus it appears that not everything is being recycled the way it should be, so it’s just better to try to wean myself off of plastic as much as possible. I have renewed hope though. I perused the What You Can Do list at the “Bag It” Web site which provides many answers and resources for creating a life less plastic. Most of all I’m buoyed up by the great wave of energy that rolled through this past weekend’s MountainFilm. Suddenly I don’t feel quite so ill about the oil spill in the Gulf. Maybe it’s a huge wake up call for us all. No one need feel totally disempowered, we can each begin to turn things around in our own way.

Check out more of what I’ve written on MountainFilm here and in my Ken Burns posting.

Know that MountainFilm goes on tour, so keep your eye out for it in case it comes to a city or town near you.

Thank you to MountainFilm and Melissa Plantz, Merrick Chase and Jennifer Koskinen for the above images.