Telluride

Yesterday I forgot to say in my post but two nearly life changing things happened. First we drove past Ralph Lauren’s Ranch. After 10 minutes of driving past his trademarked fence looking at his perfect cows, and googling his house I think we have a new possible bff.

Also, last night after we finished dinner on the porch we started to head to our tents. Dad was leading and after a few minutes declared he had no idea where they were. We searched and searched for a long time. Meanwhile we could be a bears next meal. Only one person cried and I’m sure you could guess who🤪. After looking for a long time we made it.

This morning as I woke way to bright and early I released a huge sigh of relief that a bear did not get us. I was awake all night singing the bear scare song and working on my nonexistent punching skills.

First we went to the only gieser in Colorado. I think the sign on the beginning of the trail head described it best as a “slight boil”. Also at the trail head was a big cow party. If you have ever read the book GO Dog GO you are probably familiar with the Dog Party with the big dogs, little dogs, white dogs, brown dogs ect. This was a great big cow party. We admired each other for a few minutes giving one another the occasional “moo”.

The hike up to the gieser was great and super majestical. We were surrounded by giant aspen trees and the sound of chirping birds. All of the sudden we turned a corner and saw the gieser. It was so pretty and the color blue that is was was amazing. It was doing its gieser thing when we arrived and was actually so cool.

After that we went to the Telluride Brewery. It’s in this weird back alley and for some reason reminds me of the alley in Harry Potter where he buys his wands and stuff. While we were there we played bananagrams and hung out for awhile. Then we headed to Telluride and wow. Ellie and I went on our own and we first walked into a basic store. We walked away as fast as we could when we saw the 100$ t-shirt. Another store we went into gave us culty vibes because the guy told us to “mindfully browse” and “shop with our eyes”. Also the other girl working in the store was taking another customer to the back to talk about astrology. I really felt like alexis in schitts creek at that moment.

We decided our best bet was to wait in a park for it to be 1:30 and head to the restaurant we were waiting at. It started raining a bit so we headed over early and were greeted by our family friends Mary and Sarah. As it started raining more our parents joined us and we all huddled under the umbrella. We went to this permanent food truck and they have the best Mediterranean food in the world. I got the sampler because idk why you wouldn’t get a little bit of everything. Throughout the meal it continued to rain harder and harder but it wasn’t until there was chunks of hail in my hummus that we decided to move under the cover. All 6 of us filled into this wet table taking cover from the rain.

We ran through the rain to the free gondola and took the ride up and to the other side of the mountain. We ended up at this super super cute longue and hung out there for awhile. On their menu they had a baked potato for 95$, I just got a water, but I did spend plenty of time thinking about who would choose to get that clump of starch from the dirt with 30 grams of fish eggs on it.

Afterwards we rode the gondola back down and went to Rico for 5$ chicken tenders. Much better than the 95$ POTATO. LITERAL POTATO.

We are spending the night at the Holiday Inn Cortez which I am realizing we are quickly becoming regulars at.