Mishpacha contributors share accounts of those special summers disconnected from the grind

Location: Vail, Colorado

Years: 2011

When I was newly married, the world was my oyster.

And, whoa, did I abuse that oyster. I held down two jobs, freelanced on the side, and took a ten-month intensive course, all while I was learning the ropes of running a (tiny, two-adult, but still) household. In short, the oyster needed a serious polishing.

Our second summer as a couple rolled around, and it occurred to us that in the whole rush of settling into adulthood and pursuing exciting opportunities, we’d totally skipped a step in this whole marriage thing: honeymooning.

We took this very seriously and considered every one of the 50 states as a candidate for the privilege of hosting us that summer bein hazmanim. It was probably my husband’s fond memories of Lucerne, where he’d learned in the yeshivah of Rav Yitzchak Dov Koppelman ztz”l, that attracted us to “the Switzerland of America”: Colorado.

Okay, we were going to do this… the heimish way. We snagged a “stay three nights, get the fourth night free” deal at Vail Cascade Resort and Spa, and we planned every moment of our stay. We shopped for food. We cooked food. We froze food. We packed food. We shopped for even more food.

We knew that the main hurdle of our trip (after overweight luggage), would be the fact that neither of us had a driver’s license. How would we get from the airport to the hotel? From the hotel to attractions? To minyan? Every step required creative planning. Uber was still in its infancy, and even if we’d heard of it, we had no way to access it, so we inquired about transportation options from the airport to the hotel, researched tour companies to escort us to attractions, and studied Vail’s local shuttle schedule.