A family can spend Thanksgiving at Beyul Retreat, 32 acres on the Frying Pan River in Colorado's Frying Pan River Valley, 45 minutes from Basalt and an hour from Aspen. You book the cabins and lodge rooms your group needs, and if your group is more than 6 people, our chefs can cook the meal so no one in your family spends the holiday tied to a stove. Between meals there are frosted meadows to walk, a wood fire in the lodge, and a sauna with snow on the ground outside it.
What follows is the practical version: who sleeps where, who cooks, what the weekend actually looks like, and how to get here.
Who cooks Thanksgiving dinner?
From November 2 through May 31, groups of 6 or more can arrange meals through Beyul, or cook their own. This winter our chef is staying nearby and offers meal packages to suit different group styles, so ask about them when you book. If the whole reason you went somewhere else was to stay out of the kitchen, hand the cooking to our chefs. They cook with organic, local, sustainable and seasonal ingredients, use the best animal proteins available, and accommodate every food allergy and preference at the table. That last part matters more at Thanksgiving than at any other meal of the year, when one family gathering can include a gluten intolerance, a vegetarian, a kid who eats four foods, and someone with a nut allergy that nobody wants to get wrong.
If your group is smaller than that, you cook. Every cabin has a kitchenette or a full kitchen, and the lodge rooms and the Snug cabins share a communal kitchen in the main lodge. Each cabin's setup is shown when you book.
Where does everyone sleep?
We have 13 cabins and 6 lodge rooms, and the property comfortably sleeps 60 to 70 people. A family of eight can book a few cabins. A family of thirty can book across the cabins and the lodge. You can also book a single room rather than the whole place, which is useful if your group is the kind that grows by two people.
In the cabins, the entertainment is a window, a fire, and whoever else is in the room.
What does the weekend actually look like?
November here is quiet. The aspens are bare, the river runs low and clear with ice forming at the edges, and snow may have arrived in a dusting or in earnest. Sound carries differently. You hear boots on frost, the river, and not much else.
Mornings tend to start slowly, with coffee and whoever wakes first. There are trails across the 32 acres, and a walk through a frosted meadow before breakfast is a good way to hand the day's youngest members a job. There is also the Forest Spiral, our walking meditation path.
Afternoons are where the property earns its keep. The sauna in cold weather is a different experience from the sauna in July: you sit in the heat, then step out into the cold air and into the spring-fed cold plunge, then back again. There's a hot tub for people who want warmth without the drama. Comfy couches and nooks around to read a book, or take a nap!
Then dinner. Then the fire in the lodge, which becomes the gathering point in the way a summer porch does. Evening comes early in late November, and lamplight in cabin windows at five in the afternoon is one of the better sights on this property.
How do you get here, and what should you bring?
We sit at 8,200 feet, 45 minutes up the valley from Basalt and about an hour from Aspen.
Pack layers, a warm hat, and real boots with grip. Bring a swimsuit for the sauna, cold plunge and hot tub, and slippers or camp shoes for moving between the cabin and the lodge. Bring a book. If someone in the family takes medication, bring it.
Can you stay past the holiday weekend?
Yes. We take hotel-style bookings and long stays from November 2026 through May 2027, so a Thanksgiving weekend can turn into a week, or one person in the family can stay on after everyone else drives back down the valley. A cabin and a long stretch of unstructured days suits writers and solo travelers well.
FAQ
Do we have to rent the whole property for a family Thanksgiving? No. You can book a single room, a few cabins, or the whole place, depending on the size of your group.
Can you handle our family's food allergies? Yes. Tell us while you're arranging meals rather than on the day.
Is there wifi for the people who can't fully unplug? There's wifi in the main lodge, the gathering spaces and the 6 upstairs lodge rooms. The cabins don't have it.
Beyul turns six this month, and all November 2026 stays are 50% off with code BEYULTURNS6, two-night minimum. If you're thinking about a Thanksgiving here, check available dates and we'd be glad to talk sleeping arrangements.
Photo: @kmm__photography / KMM Photography
