Who’da thunk it? With intermediate ski/ride level and a lift ticket, you too can see Vail behind the scenes!

Go behind the scenes in Vail this Tuesday, January 29 through the Vail Symposium (click to buy online.) $40 gets you lunch and a “three hour tour.” Just kidding- it goes from 9AM to 3PM. A great day of skiing, a great lunch, and more about Vail than you ever wanted to know. Sound like fun? We thought so.

If you can’t make the above date for Vail, the same for Beaver Creek will go on February 26. Mark your calendars! and see ours for more information.

2008 is going to be a very intellectual year for the participants and members of the Vail Symposium, who will be following drug scandals, international politics, cross-cultural art, and documentary films all from the Eagle valley.

This winter we will travel from India to the Peruvian Amazon to Antarctica; we will dig into history from fossils to the Vietnam War to Camp Hale; we will experience the art of Spanish music, Cowboy Artists, and Japanese calligraphy; and we will delve into sports scandals, cave microbes and organ transplants — all the while, being right here in our Valley.

The Symposium calendar is available through our calendar, and through the Vail Symposium website, where tickets to programming can be purchased and more details for programming can be found.

Personally I am still exceedingly grateful for last year’s Denver Art Tour that lead us around the Denver Art Museum, the new Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Logan collection of Denver. This year there is a Contemporary Art Tour scheduled for Beaver Creek, as well as such rare opportunities as a Bonsai Workshop, Japanese Brush Calligraphy, a Studio Glass Tour, not to mention Behind the Scenes tours of Vail and Beaver Creek, a historical Camp Hale Snowshoe, and the Active Minds series that provides major-university quality expert lecturers to the community on some of the most controversial topics.

Be sure to keep checking the Eagle Valley Blog Calendar to find out what will be happening on your days in the Vail valley.

It can be easy to plan a long-distance family vacation to a destination like Vail or Beaver Creek without all the right advice and information, especially for first time ski parents. It makes going to Florida – with its short sleeves, sandals, mickey hats, and sunscreen, look like a breeze. Taking the same vacation to a ski destination in Colorado can be comparatively called the gale-force wind. Its cold, its elevated, its strenuous, and we try to isolate the kids in ski school (“but mom! this is is supposed to be VACATION!!”) Inexperienced adults can generally make it on their own, picking up an extra pair of glove liners, socks, or Hot Chillys to stay comfortable and make the bathroom break a little less arduous. Kids don’t have that flexibility- even the flexibility to stop and use it while in ski camp. This makes it even more important to cover all your kids’ bases even over your own before they set foot on the snow. Even better, save a few bucks by gathering the gear and the plans before you get in the car or on the plane. (more…)