Becky and I went and ran the Estes Park Marathon on June 20th, 2021, which was Father’s Day weekend. The marathon was brutal with way too many hills, especially after running the Steamboat Springs Marathon just two weeks earlier. We ended up booking this hotel at the last minute through Expedia.com. I didn’t use the new travel club system that we recently joined and it cost us $286 for the night to stay in a 2 star hotel.
We were planning on staying another night, but for what we were paying there was no way. Plus, Estes Park was a total zoo with far too many people visiting at the same time. It’s something you really want to think about when you’re traveling because you’re going to pay too much money if you don’t book ahead of time. Everything was pretty much sold out in Estes Park for Father’s Day weekend, so a valuable lesson was learned with this mini-vacation. We ran this marathon five years before, but we wanted to run it again because of a new course.
Because we waited until the last minute, we paid way too much to stay in a “not so nice” hotel. It shows how poor planning can really screw up your vacation. We decided to leave after the marathon instead of staying another night. The traffic coming out of Estes Park added an hour, then Boulder to Denver added and hour and then Monument to Colorado Springs added an hour. It was a long, long, long drive! The typical 7-hour drive from Estes Park to Rio Rancho, NM turned into a 10-hour drive.
Beware of Summer After COVID-19
People have been stir crazy since COVID-19, so everyone is trying to get out and drive or fly to get some vacation time in. If you’ve already been traveling with few people doing the same, then you will be spoiled for sure. It just goes to show the importance of preparation if you’re going to travel. You don’t want to get hookwinked into an overpriced place to stay the night. Estes Park is beautiful, but if you go at the wrong time you can end up paying all the dough for what should be a cheap motel.
In the end, we finished another marathon to add to our list of medals and time spent running together, but we don’t plan to do this one again on a holiday. Even though it was Father’s Day, it was way too busy. There are far better destination marathons and places to visit with far more options for traveling on a holiday. If we do run another marathon on a holiday where there will be more people traveling at the same time, we will definitely look for a destination with better places to stay for the money. A mountain town with limited hotel choices is definitely off the list, unless you can book a timeshare in advance and stay longer to make it worthwhile.
If you want to check out a website where you can join a travel club for a nominal monthly fee as low as $50 a month to get discounts on travel CLICK HERE (a new tab should open in your browser). I am discussing in other articles some examples of how much money we have saved by using this unique travel club, that also allows you to have a part-time business and the opportunity to earn money sharing it with others who join your network.
Becky and I run marathons every year with our friends and we joined this travel club to save money on traveling. We didn’t use it for Estes Park, CO because we decided to go at the last minute and everything was sold out, but this is usually not the case. After you join or check out the site and the opportunity, reach out to me for more information on how you can do what I do as a Share Merchant and “Travel Through Timeshare“.
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