Colorado Recommended resorts for New Year’s trip—Rockies?

[ejj]

Yeah, I love the idea of the train, but with a family it seldom works out well for time and money.

I have taken that train (Empire builder) from Glacier to Seattle and St Paul, MN to western ND. It is beautiful and sipping a drink in the lounge car while watching the view is great.
But, that route is heavily used by freight trains, including the oil trains from the shale oil fields out in western ND/eastern MT. They take precedence over the passenger trains, which means huge delays are likely.

Last summer I checked out Minnesota to Seattle for my family with 2 kids: plane $750, Amtrak $3000! Both one way for the 4 of us.
I have also taken Amtrak to western ND. At the end of our bike trip, we reached Medora by 10:00 am. If we had driven home from there, we would have been home in a Duluth that evening, instead, we didn’t reach Duluth until 12:00 the next day, since the train was delayed 8 hours before we got on, and then more delays while on it.

Wow—I hadn’t considered the Williston Oil Play and how it might mess with the train schedules. Missing a day of vacation hanging out on the train would be a bummer.

It’s hard to argue with direct flights.

 

[Sibhusky]

What I've heard is that the Bakken fields aren't as busy as they were about five years back. There were some horrid delays back then, but it improved. Which is not to say you would arrive on time. I really must nag Slow O to get on this forum.