Day 9: Utaaahhhhh

Fit trip tip #123 (or something like that): Do not be afraid to pamper yourself. Ever. But especially when you’ve been hunched over a steering wheel for days on end. The Beaver Creek Resort offers amazing spa services, and after eight days of driving, we were definitely ready to take advantage of ‘em.

The alarm clock sounded at 5:30am so that we could jump out of bed and get a quick hike in before our relaxation session (ie, massages at the Allegria Spa in the Park Hyatt Beaver Creek) began. We put on our gear, including the gotta-love Yunnan Hiking Capris from GoLite, and headed out to the Overlook Trail. We’re not 100 percent positive, but we think we saw an elk. How is that different from a male deer (buck), you ask? We’re not quite sure. But we have to go with our guts here, so let’s just call it an elk. We also spotted some beautiful Colorado wildflowers and horses being prepped for a day at the Beaver Creek Ranch. We hiked for a good hour and a half, taking in the views and feeling great about getting out of bed and soaking in some early morning sun. FYI, fresh air feels really, really good.

View of the Beaver Creek Resort from our morning hike.

We belong among the wildflowers... (Tom Petty, anyone?)

Lindsey looking especially chipper at 7am

Deer hooves! Oh wait. Nope. These are horseshoes. And we're on the horse trail...

We walked down from the trail and straight into the spa. We had scheduled a Swedish massage (Beth) and a deep tissue massage (Lindsey) for 9am, but we wanted to check out the Aqua Sanitas Water Sanctuary first. This relaxing water ritual begins with a dip in the spa’s thermae pool, which is supposed to help relieve sore muscles (score!). You then move into a mineral pool that feels like heaven. Next is a hot rainshower to rinse off all the minerals, a trip to the steam room to “recharge your senses” and a few minutes to rest up in the Tepidarium, a serene, lavender-scented room, before your massage even begins. We left the spa feeling super-relaxed and totally recharged. The whole experience was, in a word, ahhh-mazing.

We then packed our stuff up and hit the road (again). We drove about 2.5 hours to Fruita, CO, for lunch. Fruita, a mountain biking mecca right before the CO-UT border, is known for its local produce and farms, so we were excited to see what the small town had to offer our appetites. We ate at Hot Tomato Cafe, a cute bar-restaurant that totally does its name justice.

The "small" salad was super-fresh with tomatoes, mushrooms, red onions, olives and mixed greens.

Granny's Pesto pizza with basil pesto, mozzarella, garlic, feta and tomatoes. Delish!

We left Fruita and headed toward Utah. The drive was absolutely breathtaking, with vast mountain ranges, sandblasted hills and bright green valleys scattered throughout. The landscape seemed to change every five minutes, keeping us interested in the otherwise lonely road for hours.

Looks like a car commercial, right? During the rugged portion of our drive.

Kinda creepy, but very eco-friendly windmills near Provo, UT. It looked like we were going to drive right into them!

Our friend Colleen gave us the most scenic directions to her condo at the Canyons Resort in Park City—we passed two waterfalls, Sundance and Utah Lake.

We may not have seen any movie stars, but this rock star let us know we were in the right place anyway.

We were psyched to finally land in Park City and went directly over to Colleen’s house to have a homemade dinner with her and her husband, Whit. They placed a space heater on their patio so we could eat our delicious meal (see below) outside, under the stars. We ate, we drank, and we witnessed at least four shooting stars. Utaaaaaahhhhhh is right.

Veggie lasagna made with zucchini rather than noodles. And yes, it tasted as good as it looks.

Fresh salmon, marinated in Moroccan spices and pan-seared

The perfect plate of food—kudos to the chef!