TAKING THE HIGH ROADS :

TAKING THE HIGH ROAD ON YOUR ROUTE DU BONHEUR IN THE ROCKIES:

Relais & Châteaux offers its traditional Route du Bonheur (road to happiness) in Colorado and Montana at our luxury resorts of The Home Ranch and The Triple Creek Ranch.

While both of these mountain resort getaways have enough to entertain the most intrepid traveler for an entire week, others may want to see as much a possible of the sights and scenery surrounding these Relais & Châteaux luxurious gems. It is easy to get from one to the other in a day’s drive, stopping to see some of the shops, historical sites, and geography unique to this part of the Western United States. Slight detours will take you Vail, Taos and many other mountain communities along the way. There are hundreds of worthy explorations here. These are some of our favorites.

About an hour north of Vail, heading toward the luxury hotel of The Home Ranch in Clark, Colorado, you’ll pass through a internationally known ski resort: Steamboat Springs. Still a huge ranching community, Steamboat is flavored with a laid-back wild west cowboy atmosphere. Bubbling with geothermal hot springs, there are two springs in Steamboat that are open to the public including Strawberry Park Hot Springs located seven miles outside of town. Here two large pools are lit only by the stars at night and are wonderfully popular with both locals and visitors. Within the Steamboat town limits be sure to take a self-guided walking tour of the wonderfully preserved historic village. Sights to see include Lyon Drug Store, built in 1908 out of pressed brick with one of the last great soda fountains in the country. Tread of Pioneers Museum features a period-furnished Victorian home which highlights the history of skiing in the area, Native American arts and ranching. Howelsen Hill is named for the ski jumping character who made the sport into a recreational industry. It is where the first tow lift in Steamboat was built and later site of a 90-meter ski jump on which many past Olympians have trained.

The nearby town of Clark, Colorado is the location of The Home Ranch. This tiny community is believed to have been named for Worthington Clark, an old time stagecoach operator. The most wonderful thing about this luxury retreat is that it sits in the heart of the Steamboat Lake Park, Pearl Lake State Park and Routt National Forest and offers visitors hundreds of thousands of wilderness acreage for every sort of outdoor summer or winter activity. A world class equestrian center at The Home Ranch offers everyone a taste of western ranch life and for those who prefer to travel into the nearby mountains may ride horses, hike in summer or cross-country ski or snowshoe in winter.

If you decide to visit Aspen, Colorado, you should plan to spend at least a day visiting the very upscale boutiques, hiking the back country of the Rocky Mountain wilderness, sampling the summer culture or the winter skiing. Summer time unveils the Aspen Music Festival and School (www.aspenmusicfestival.com) started nearly 60 years ago by modern Aspen’s founding father Walter Paepcke. For nine weeks there is music in the mountains with daily concerts everywhere from the state-of-the-art music tent to the top of Aspen Mountain. The Aspen Institute (www.aspeninstitute.org), another Paepcke braintrust is a global forum that convenes leader from around the world to discuss policy-making along with the state of humankind.

Though many of the activities are summer oriented there are public speaking programs and seminars throughout the year. Other summer favorites include the Food & Wine Festival in June and the Jazz Festival both in June and again over Labor Day. In winter, of course, Aspen’s precious commodity is powdery snow, the reason the town has long been known as one of the world’s premiere ski resorts. The Aspen Skiing Company (www.aspensnowmass.com) consists of four magnificent ski mountains spread over a 14-mile radius - Aspen Mountain, Buttermilk/Tiehack, Aspen Highlands, and Snowmass.

Easy day drives from Aspen include Snowmass, Redstone, Colorado, and Glenwood Springs.

The town of Snowmass Village (www.snowmassvillage.com), only ten miles from downtown Aspen, is a world unto itself. It has the largest ski mountain, and a village consisting of more than 32 restaurants and 25 retail shops. In summer there are rodeos, ballooning, fishing, and hiking - something for the most stalwart outdoor enthusiast. Most recently the upscale Snowmass Club (www.snowmassclub.com) has opened a new 18-hole golf course designed by renowned golf architect, Jim Engh. It is now considered by many to be the finest course in the Roaring Fork Valley.

The village of Redstone (http://www.redstonecolorado.com/) is only a 45-minute drive from Aspen nestled along the banks of the Crystal River outside of Carbondale. Sometimes called “the Ruby of the Rockies” Redstone was a coal mining empire at the turn of the 20th-century and still retains a strong historic air these many years later. Coal mines are still in evidence along with many of the early miners cottages, a small Main Street with some fine art galleries, quaint boutiques and an astonishing 42-room Tudor-style castle built by industrialist John Cleveland Osgood in 1897.

Glenwood Springs (www.glenwoodchamber.com) is another historic town located at the north end of the Roaring Fork Valley about an hour’s drive from Aspen, Vail and Grand Junction. Glenwood is the headquarters of the White River National Forest, the largest national forest in Colorado, and has a host of outdoor activities ranging from rafting to flyfishing, biking, hiking and golfing. It may be most famous though for its historical hot springs. The Glenwood Hot Springs pool (www.hotspringspool.com) is the world’s largest. Thousands of years in the making, the hot springs were once used by the Ute Indians, who thought the pool sacred. It was established for general use in 1888. Over two blocks long, the natural mineral waters are heated to 93 degrees year round with a smaller therapy pool as warm at 104 degrees.

From Glenwood it is an easy hour’s drive along I-70 to get to the world renowned ski resort of Vail (www.vailresorts.com). Unarguably one of the world’s greatest ski mountains, Vail consists of 5,289-acres of mountain wilderness in the heart of the White River National Forest. Its Bavarian-style village is filled with shops and restaurants spilling over with visitors at every time of year and has become a sought-out destination for sportsmen, gourmands and even spa lovers. Don’t miss the Colorado Ski Museum and Colorado Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame (www.skimuseum.net) which chronicles skiing history in Colorado for more than 130 years. Learn about the men and women who founded the sport and how it has progressed from the days of rope tows through amazing new age technology.

In Montana, Relais & Châteaux offers the luxury resort of Triple Creek Ranch. Bitterroot National Forest is 1.6 million acres of terrain ranging from grasslands to high alpine lakes for a memorable afternoon of brown trout fly fishing. From the Triple Creek Ranch there is skiing and winter sports activities, couples massage at our spa or horseback riding. There are thousands of acres of land to be explored and rivers and creeks to be fished or rafted. Weekends during the fall “The Spectrum of Color and Artistry” comes to the Triple Creek Ranch where nine western artists host a unique experience at this luxury destination western resort.

These few words only touch on all the beauty and pastimes to be found in and around the towns of the Relais & Châteaux luxury properties. For more information check with the concierges of each resort and discover all that awaits you in this exciting and diverse region.

TAKING THE HIGH ROADS : nearby Relais & Chateaux properties