Day 24 #EVtoTennessee
Estes Park to Vail. 145 miles
The Index of all 30 posts from day 1 of our #TeslaRoadTripUSA is HERE.
Stopped in Boulder on the way to Vail for coffee. Enjoyed meeting a student from boulder university talking about their highly effective BDS campaign. She is 18. Explained to me that BDS is the reason students are protesting, not just here in Boulder, but around the world. Boycott. Divest. Sanction. The apartheid genocide state. They want their schools to stop all business with Zionists. Including graduates working for pro genocide organizations, like military contractors. I could not be more impressed with the kids at this school. Just say no to Nazi Government, be it Red or Blue.
Pictiures from the drive across Colorado - past Denver in the distance. Past a terrifying building that is an extremely expensive court house. A terrifying camoflauged muscle car. And some shots of the wide open countryside.
The drive to Vail. Past Copper Mountain. And a pyramid shaped mountain topped in snow.
Arrived in Vail and immediately felt at home. I like it here. The population of the town was 4,835 in 2020. Vail was incorporated in 1966, four years after the opening of Vail Ski Resort.
The ski area was founded by Pete Seibert and local rancher Earl Eaton in 1962, at the base of Vail Pass. The pass was named after Charles Vail, the highway engineer who routed U.S. Highway 6 through the Eagle Valley in 1940, which eventually became Interstate 70.
Seibert, a New England native, served in the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division during World War II, which trained at Camp Hale, 14 miles south of Vail between Red Cliff and Leadville. He was wounded in Italy but went on to become a professional skier after he recovered.
Seibert, with other former members of the 10th Mountain Division, returned to Colorado after World War II with the intention of opening a ski resort. During training for ski troopers at Camp Hale, he bivouacked on Vail Mountain and identified it as an ideal ski mountain.
In December 1962, Vail officially opened for its first season. It operated a gondola lift and two ski lifts on the mountain owned by the United States Forest Service. The village was established at the base of the mountain for local residents and offered lodging for visitors. It quickly grew throughout the valley, with housing added first in East Vail and then West Vail, and additional lodging added in Lionshead in the late 1960s. By 1969, Vail was the most popular ski resort in the state. In 1988 Vail opened China Bowl, making Vail the third largest ski area in North America.
Vail's average elevation is 8,150 feet. The town is surrounded by the White River National Forest and the Vail Ski Resort is leased from the United States Forest Service. Mount of the Holy Cross is visible from Vail Mountain. As ever on this trip, religious imagery is pervasive.
The racial makeup of the town in 2020:
86.33% White
10.34% Hispanic or Latino people of any race were
0.83% African American
0.41% Native American
1.80% Asian
The median household income was $100,417, and the median family income was $127,336.
6.0% of the population were in poverty.
7% of the population had a high school or equivalent education, 19.2% had some college but no degree, 6.5% had an associate's degree, 41.5% had a bachelor's degree, and 25.1% had a graduate or professional degree.
Lindsey Vonn, Olympic skier, is from Vail. As is Gerald Ford, Former President of the United States (1974–1977). And Mikaela Shiffrin, Olympic skier.
Ice skating. First time in about fifty years.
Vail is splendidly beautiful. Met some extraordinary South African origin people. Liz, who has been in Vail after an extraordinary life of adventure from Cyprus to Cape Town to Rhodesia, and then some twenty other homes including floating ones, before finding Vail in 1970. And Cornelius, from Saint Lucia, on the East Coast of South Africa. Extraordinary Vail attracts some extraordinary people. We spent half our time here chatting with Liz, and then Cornelius.
Perhaps the best part of this road trip is meeting the extraordinary people who populate this vast, spectacular, former Indian territory.
After another 12,000 hike through vail, the spa here was most welcome. 104 degrees. Had an excellent dinner the Bully. At SonnenAlp Hotel. Enjoyed our Vail sunset.
Tomorrow Moab National Park.