Vail Tripby MonkeyPig (guest blogger)

I promised NN that I'd post my Vail picture last week. But, work had been busy.

It was a really good trip. Travel tip, instead of staying in Vail where a cup of tap water will cost you 50$, there are several towns outside of Vail and within 10-20 minute's drive. The lodging is as good and much cheaper. I stayed in Avon. It was advertised as a 1 1/2 star "motel" on Expedia.com. I thought it'll be a dump. To my surprise, the room was good size, clean and there was a kitchenette - a must in any FOB style travel. To save on tips, I hung the do-not-disturb sign out for the entire stay.

We had class from 7-10am, break, and return to class again from 4-7pm.

I had a lot of fun and it was pennies (Vail pennies) a day. Rented snowshoes and hiked the national forests. Didn't see any critters. Saw a lot of their interesting tracks. . Some of the tracks were of two different prints -- one look like a deer (hoofed) and the other look like some kind of cats (lynx / bobcats) . You can see the cat tracks are circling around itself as it its sniffing out a scent. It was great! At time, its you and nature. .

I tried cross country skiing one day. I won another medal that day...I was falling every 5 minutes. I had the most fall and received the idiot award that day.

All-in-all, it was a great trip. I saw a side of Vail not many people see when they visit Vail.

Thanks to Wal-mart, I made about 40$ a day on the per diem.