Ethan B. Holland

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Saying goodbye to the Gores and closing a chapter: Vail YOLO Adventure Part X

September 7, 2026

Rori and I climbed Grand Traverse on Wednesday, and we enjoyed walking around Vail on Thursday. On Friday, we only had the morning, so we visited my old house, grabbed some breakfast in town, and headed out.

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The house where Caleb and I lived was in great shape 33 years later. We soaked up the sun and enjoyed walking around the property. It’s an amazing A-frame house that, at the time I rented it, was owned by Frank Shorter, the Olympic marathon runner. The house is largely the same, although the back deck was gone and a fire pit is now in the side yard. The trees were huge compared to when I lived there.

We took a selfie at the bus stop where I took the shuttle into work every morning, and then we headed into town and enjoyed seeing Grand Traverse and the Gore Range towering above us.

I rode this bus to work every day in 1994

Pretty cool to always be able to say “We were up there”

We grabbed brunch at the bougie Vintage Vail.

I hesitate to write negative reviews, but this brunch is not worth it.

We stopped by The Red Lion -Vail which, after 63 years, is being torn down as developers are redoing the building. It’s quite an end of an era. I bought a hat and a T-shirt, and then we said our goodbyes to Vail.

As we drove down I-70, the frontage road where I used to run home every night ran alongside us. The Gores looked down on us just like they did 33 years ago, and as they faded out of sight, it was pretty wild that I now know I’ve been to the top. I hope I get to go back with Chloe sometime, but I’m not sure I’ll ever see Grand Traverse in person again.

In the winter of 1994, I ran home to this view every night in the dark, along the frontage road you can see beside I-70 in this video (above). It was a five-mile run from Lionshead to our house in East Vail. More often than not, the Gore Range was clearly visible in the moonlight. Orion sparkled above the mountains’ silhouette each night.

My soundtrack was the crunching of the snow under each footstep. The video captures the view, including when I would turn the corner to go into East Vail, and the Gores would set behind the mountain and disappear from view.

Rori, out of nowhere, asked that we swing through Idaho Springs. Idaho Springs is a mountain town on I-70 outside of Vail, just east of Loveland Pass. It’s a quintessential iconic mountain town. Rori told me her favorite coffee place when she and her friends go hiking is in Idaho Springs…The Frothy Cup.

It was a pretty fun plot twist to leave my old mountain town and discover that Rori has basically found one of her own. A woman was clearing a table, and I decided to tell her that I thought it was cool that it was Rori’s favorite place. As fate would have it, the woman turned out to be the owner of The Frothy Cup, Amanda Moeller, and we traded stories of moving to the mountains from the East Coast and how special the people are who live and work in mountain towns.

Amanda was from outside Tampa, and amazingly, Rori almost went to the University of Tampa. It was pretty neat to hear Amanda’s take on just how great of a decision Rori made to go to Boulder.

Throughout our trip this week, I made a point to show Rori that if you say hello to people and break the ice, almost every single person who works in a mountain town has an incredible story, a kind heart, and is open to making friends. That’s one of my favorite things about my time in Vail.

It was a fitting way to wrap up an incredible four days. We drove back into Boulder to transition into moving Rori into school and finishing her house.

I’ve really enjoyed recounting this week with everyone!

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