At home in Telluride
One of our goals on this trip was to go to the places that are hard to get to. Telluride was tops on my list for this and I really wanted to know more about it.
When we pulled into Telluride we had this instant feeling of “I’m home” I’ll try to describe that feeling but I’m not sure it’s possible without going there.
The town of Telluride is surrounded on 3 sides by tall magnificent mountains. There really is only one road into the town. The main street looks up onto a mountain that has a waterfall. You can’t make this up. It’s stunning.
The 3 of us were giggly from the time we pulled into town. It felt like a real working town yet better.
We went to a local brewery for dinner and met our waitress who seemed a bit flustered and we knew we needed to figure out how to help her to fly.
After talking a bit she mentioned that she was engaged and we came up with an idea. Lauren and Shannon each wrote a note on order pads to her fiancee about how excited she was to marry him. She was on cloud 9. I forgot to snap a pic of the final notes but it was really adorable.
Our waitress was telling everyone about it .One thing that doing this does is it creates a ripple effect. It encourages those we talk to to pay it forward in some way. They ALWAYS tell someone about it and I have to admit, that positivity is insanely gratifying.
This is the view from Breakfast! Can you see the waterfall?
Telluride has a separate mountain village and until they built a gondola between the town and the mountain village you had to drive around the mountain to get to the ski hill. Now they run a free gondola from 6am to midnight every night so you can just hop between them. It keeps traffic way down and is much better for the environment. Plus its just fun!
We had our first rain delay in 21 days on vacation. So we ate lunch and played cards in a gondola that they had to hang out in. How great is that?!
We took our bikes up the gondola and were planning on going in the bike park. (Take the lifts up… ride some sweet trails down.) But instead we took a trail from the mountain village back to the town. It was a blue trail (similar rating to a blue square in skiing) which is pretty intense for 7 & 9 year olds. It was a blast and then… Lauren went over her handlebars for the first time!
She didn’t make the turn on a steep curve. OUCH
She was a champ! It was about a mile into a 3 mile downhill and then a 2 mile flat trail.
The girls first time trying Thai Food…
Since Telluride felt so much like a place we could call home, we found ourselves at the library. It was a fantastic one and before I knew it, the girls had books they wanted to take out. We now are proud Telluride Library Card owners. LOL We were back the next day to get new books.
When we first got to town we saw people with tubes floating down the stream. That quickly moved to the top of our must do list. So we bought tubes at the hardware store and hopped in. The water was cold, refreshing, and FUN! We went about a mile before we hopped out. This surely has us wanting to do it back home.
Drinks and appetizers at the fancy restaurant in town. Lauren insisted on ordering muscles and ate nearly the whole thing. They are trying and liking more and more different foods. This pic in the middle they wanted the act like the queen. lol
I took this picture when I was out for a run the morning we left. Feel so blessed to be here right now.
Thinking why I loved Telluride so much comes down to a few things. The people were all super friendly. There was culture in many different forms. Plays, music, art, and more. There are a lot of wealthy people who either live there or have a house there. It feels like they brought their brains and money together to create outstanding resources for a small town. (I read that they had a goal of creating the greatest library there was.) It sure did pull us in. There is the Ah Haa School for the Arts which had programming that reminded me of Chautauqua’s and much more.
Telluride is an incredible place. So glad we made it here!
