Telluride area: Part 1

Our friend invited us to her cabin in Ridgway, Colorado, which is about 20 minutes from Telluride.  We drove up with them Friday night after work - what a weekend!  We hit some rush hour traffic on Friday on C470, which was to be expected at 5:00.  We took 285 to get there since 70 was backed up (there is ALWAYS traffic on 70 in the mountains).  It was a beautiful drive, but we spent memorial day weekend in Buena Vista (halfway point to Telluride), so I was familiar with the scenery.  Shortly after Buena Vista it got dark, so I couldn't see much.  After several hours of the celebrity game, we arrive at the cabin around 10:45.  We unloaded the car and had a few drinks on the porch.  The sky was so clear and the moon was so bright that we didn't need any lights and we could see each other just fine.

Saturday morning Matt and I were the first to wake up around 8:00. I'm really grumpy and tired when I'm running on 6 hours of sleep, but the fresh mountain air got me going.  We took the jeep down into town (Ridgway is 10 minutes down the mountain) and stopped at the coffee shop.  Such a cute, quaint mountain town!

View at 8 am from the main room in the house

After breakfast, we decided to take the jeep over to Ouray to go to Yankee Boy Basin.  We went through town and stopped to get sandwiches to go at Timberline Deli of Ouray.  Great sandwiches and it was convenient to stop and town and grab something for the road.

Side note: we picked up the jeep in town on Friday night.  There were carburetor issues and it was getting worked on,  but was supposed to be fixed.

We drove up the dirt road through the mountains and it was beautiful.  All of a sudden the car stalled a few times, but we got it running right away.  We has just passed a ledge that dropped at least 500 feet down (no guard rail - just a dirt road and a cliff!!) and the car stalled.  We couldn't get it to start, so the guys got out and tried to push it to a flatter surface.  After trying for a bit, we decided to put the car in neutral and go back down the mountain that way.  The ride down was fine, except when we were right next to the cliff!! I only have one picture of the guys pushing the jeep to a flatter area.

The car started when we got to lower elevation so we drove it back the 30 minutes to the cabin.  We ate our sandwiches and decided to go floating down the river in town.  Of course at this time we could see a storm rolling in from many directions, but we decided to do it.  In the middle of our lunch, we were greeted  by a cow.  The property next to the cabin has a barbed wire fence and there must have been a hole in it because once the herd of cows saw one cow on the other side of the fence, a few were curious.  All of a sudden we had two cows in the front yard!

It took about 75 minutes to go down 3 miles on the river. It was so fun; we were all slap happy since the water was freezing, it was 65 degrees and it was raining!

That night we we went to Colorado Boy, a brewery in Ridgway.  The only food on their menu is pizza, but wow is it good! I loved the pilsner and blonde beers.  We got the pizza to go and ate dinner at home and hung out the rest of the night.

Stay tuned for part 2!