Glenwood Springs

Hey everyone! i can't believe it's already wednesday. life is much better when you get monday off. i'll be posting pics next week, but i have to tell you about our trip to glenwood springs. as i mentioned last week, we went there for a few days for our one year anniverary. it was wonderfully relaxing and i learned a lot more about the hotel. we lucked out and they screwed up our reservation so we got upgraded for free to this huge suite. it's at the top of the hotel and has a private balcony overlooking the hot springs. we felt very spoiled! the night we arrived they had a historical tour of the hotel that i attended. thomas caught a really bad cold before we left, so he had to get some rest, but he was a trouper the rest of the time.

there was much trauma in the kurtz household while i was away. creede had to have surgery in guymon and was in the hospital for a couple of days. he is now out of the hospital and on the mend. thankfully, my parents were there the whole time to make sure he was treated well. so creede, get well soon!

anyway, here are a few highlights from my hotel tour. i figured it would be 15 minutes or so but it was over an hour!

• the hotel was built by a man named Walter Devereux. He modeled it off the Villa Medici in Rome and payed $125,000 for the property (10 acres including the hot springs) and it cost $850K to build the hotel - called the Marvel of the Age when it was completed.
  al capone stayed there while on probabtion. he asked a bellboy to get him some gin from across the street and then tipped the bellboy enough to pay for his 4 yr tuition to denver university.
• teddy roosevelt did use the hotel as his western white house. he would come to hunt and would shoot as many as 30 animals at a time - bear, elk, etc. this makes you think about how colorado must have been chock full of animals back then. one time he didn't get a bear and the maids made him one from cloth. a reporter observed the whole thing and it led to the 'teddy bear'.
• ted bundy hid out in the hotel for 2 days after escaping from police in aspen. once he was caught, he escaped from the glenwood police after an hour. he was then finally caught again in FL after killing another five girls!
• in 1942 the us government took over the hotel to use as a rehabilitation center for the navy in ww2. so they painted everything white and got rid of lots of antiques.
• they have $7 million to do a major restoration of the hotel - bring it back to its glory days. this should be done in 2 yrs.
• thomas heard 2 ghost stories from the masseuse: a bride haunts the hotel. her groom was killed on the way to the wedding. she thought he just stood her up so she killed herself. you can sometimes see her walking around in her wedding dress. the other is a nurse during ww2 was involved in a love triangle with 2 wounded navy guys. one of the guys found out and killed the nurse and the other guy. the hotel is haunted by the lady in the nurse's uniform.
• i saw no ghosts.
  

on sunday nite thomas and i officially celebrated our anniversary. this involved us eating a bite from our wedding cakes that have been frozen for a year and taking up lots of freezer space. we had the top of the bride's cake and a huge chunk of the groom's cake as well to try. we both had a bite of each. they weren't bad and the icing in particular held up well. i also finally got to open a bottle of wine i bought over 10 years ago in napa valley with martina. it was a small bottle of Robert Mondavi 1988 cabernet. i made the dramatic declaration on buying it that i would not open it until i'd found my true love. after one year of marriage i'm more than convinced it's thomas! we were afraid it would taste like vinegar, but it was delicous. i know, i'm a hopeless romantic. i'm also a huge klutz (with a bad memory), so the fact that this bottle has been from OK to AR to CO without having broken is a miracle as is my remembering to bring it and the cakes (thanks to thomas on that one) along with us.

when we weren't at the hotel, we were at the hot springs. and as thomas said, they're the ocean of colorado. one pool is almost double the size of an olympic size pool. the water was so warm and it's full of 32 minerals (documented by the mayo brothers) so it's really easy to float. after 2 days practice, i could win a contest in floating. i cannot say how awesome these hot springs are. if you're ever in the area you must visit. speaking of the area, glenwood springs is about 30 minutes from aspen. i read yesterday that there was a private memorial to hunter thompson in aspen on saturday. j depp, jack nicholson, bill murray and a whole bunch of others were just 30 minutes away from yours truly! it's probably a good thing i didn't know about this in advance or there would have been some major stalking going on. about 200 people sat in the hotel jerome for hours trading stories. the funniest i read about was from don johnson, a neighbor. he once asked hunter what is the sound of one hand clapping. hunter responded by slapping his face. i'm sure melanie griffith would have approved.

all for now. i'll be back later in the week to talk about a couple of books i read. i haven't seen a movie in ages (tho be cool is on my list for the wkend) and i haven't yet watched deadwood.
-sunday