This could be my shortest post yet. (It won’t be… but it could be.)
There was no trip planning. Or at least not for Key West…
What was planned was a trip to Snowmass, CO to have our last family ski trip before our oldest heads off to college in the fall. But Mother Nature had other plans. Most of the US ski resorts – but especially Colorado and Utah – had historically bad winters in 2025-26. We watched the snow accumulations (or lack thereof) all winter and wondered if our early April trip was doomed. But then there was a beacon of hope – Snowmass got a huge storm and over a foot of snow the week before we were supposed to go. Our trip was saved!
Or was it? Imagine our surprise when 2 days before we were flying out there, the mountain abruptly announced that it would be closing for the season in 3 days. We would only be able to ski for one day and it would be the last day of their season. And then what? We would have had 4 more days there suddenly in the shoulder season – we couldn’t ski but it was too early and cold for any spring activities.
Luckily we had booked our accommodations through the mountain (normally we use VRBO) and they offered to refund us for everything. A quick call to the airlines and we discovered that they would too. So we decided to pivot. We cancelled everything and started to look for a place to go just 2 days later.
Using the Explore option on google flights, I wrote down basically every destination that we could go to in the US for around $400 a ticket. With just 2 days notice and a war affecting oil prices and therefore flight prices, I was surprised at how many options we had. We conferred with the other family we were traveling with and quickly settled on Key West.
Through some miracle, we were able get all our CO money refunded and somehow ended up spending basically the exact same amount on a last minute rebooking to Key West. We booked our flights and got a killer deal on a last minute VRBO and all that was left to do was put away the ski gear we had laid out and pack for a beach trip instead.
So we arrived in Key West with literally no planning or bookings other than the house we had rented. Thankfully this was a spring trip and not a summer one and we were able to book activities a day in advance. So we essentially planned each day’s activities the day before. And it worked out perfectly! Normally I think this would have hurt my inner trip planner but I was just so thrilled that we pulled off the greatest pivot in our family travel history.
We ended up doing the following activities:
- Snorkeling
- Jet Skiing
- Fort Zachary Taylor State Park Beach and Fort
- The Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum
- Parasailing
