Where Dallas' elite go to cool their heels in the heat of summer

5 Star destinations can offer you the life of the elite with it's Aspen Luxury Home Rentals!

By ALAN PEPPARD / The Dallas Morning News

No doubt you've noticed there's no line to get the oil changed on your Bentley, there's no need to sweet-talk Jean-Pierre to get a billionaire table at Café Pacific, and the lights are out at some of the grander estates.Why?
It's August, baby. And everyone with a black American Express and a fractional jet share has flown the coop to flock with birds of a feather in more temperate hamlets favored by Town & Country photographers.
To be caught in one's own hometown between the Fourth of July and Labor Day is prima facie evidence that, in financial terms at least, you are mortal. Even a leased Maserati and a leased Rolex can't erase the shame of not having a summer home in the Hamptons.
For affluent Dallasites, Colorado has always been the default destination for summer hedonism. The late Dallas tycoon John Murchison was one of the founders of Vail and it still has its adherents. But for those looking for flash, Aspen is the spot.
Like the Hamptons, Aspen is favored precisely because it's nigh-on impossible to get there without a private jet – and even then it can be hairy. The mountain runway leaves no room for error.
In the Eagles' 1976 anthem "The Last Resort," Dallasite and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Don Henley declared Aspen bespoiled by infidels when he sang, "Somebody laid the mountains low, while the town got high." A few years later, the Aspen-Pitkin County Airport took its revenge when Mr. Henley arrived on a Learjet that overshot the runway and crashed in a cow pasture.
"When the plane came to a stop on some boulders, I immediately began the process of opening the emergency hatch," Mr. Henley says. "I looked to my left and through the cockpit window I could see the co-pilot literally sprinting away from the plane. When I drove past the airport the next day, the plane had been hoisted by its tail on a huge crane and it was just hanging there like a shark."
Unbowed, the charter company went ahead and billed him for the flight. The Eagles' famously pugnacious manager Irving Azoff returned the invoice with a note that read simply, "We don't pay for crashes."
The runway has since been lengthened and Dallas billionaires Dee and Charles Wyly are able to shoehorn their Gulfstream V into the valley to get to their own Rocky Mountain San Simeon. The Wylys have a stunning mansion in Woody Creek filled with contemporary art and set on a compound that includes separate homes for their daughters.
Next-door neighbor and frequent dinner guest Don Johnson has nicknamed it the Taj Ma'Wyly.
The streets of downtown Aspen are an odd hybrid of Highland Park Village and Rodeo Drive. Summertime regulars such as Park Place dealerships owner Ken Schnitzer and his wife, Lisa; book agent Jan Miller and her husband, Jeff Rich; superlawyer Alan Feld, of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld; and cosmetics king Richard Rogers (son of Mary Kay) and his wife, Nancy, are regulars at the same stores and bistros as Kevin Costner, Michael Douglas and real-life femme fatale Claudine Longet. (In 1976, she shot and killed her boyfriend, Olympic skier Spider Sabich, after he stepped from the shower at his Aspen home.)
Former Dallas cable TV entrepreneur and Aspen habitué Jeff Marcus was married last week in the mountain town to his longtime girlfriend, Nicola Zahn. The couple shares his house on Aspen's Riverside Drive.

Find your Aspen luxury home rental for the summer and cool-down with 5 Star destinations.