Main street of Telluride
It's exciting arriving at a new place after dark and then seeing it for the first time the next morning, a present unwrapped. Telluride proved both as dramatic and quaint as its google images, with small, independent and interesting shops, a middle part of main street that held flower boxes and allowed commercial vehicles to park, and minimal traffic. The side roads were even nicer, holding tiny miner's cottages, tidily painted with beautiful gardens and hanging flowers. Behind the town on three sides were not-fooling-around mountains, forming the box canyon and acting as both a natural barrier for the town and contrast in scale.
While there are times that a morning coffee addiction can be a bit of an anchor, in a new place it's also an opportunity for a cultural deep dive. Coffee Cowboy was pulling at me hard, but its location at the bottom of the gondola in a truck wasn't right so I struck out for Bruno with my orange notebook and as it turned out, culturally appropriate messy hairy and unkempt activewear. My silver Birkenstocks may have been on the wrong side of flashy.
As Brandon with a fauxhawk told us, no one is from Telluride (he is from Washington state). In the coffee line, there were a fair amount of second homers, Arcteryx, Stio and On ruling the day. It was easy to tell (or so I imagined) the short-term visitors like me, more likely to be impatiently reading something on their phones while waiting, versus the landed gentry who had been culturally initiated into eschewing phones in favor of being friendly. There was also a contingent of 20's-40's mountain men and women who brought in their own coffee cups, appeared to have slept in their clothes and from their faces, hands, and manner of slow, drawn out speech, likely spent more of their lives well above Telluride's 8754 feet. They tended to know others within the community and moved around the cafe like square dancers changing partners. I guess I wrote in my notebook, but honestly, it was a cover.
Bruno, attached to Bookstore
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While we may not be planners, we do have intentions, one of which was walking in the mountains as much as possible. On our first day, we opted for Bear Creek Falls, a trail that was recommended for us east-coasters who hadn't yet adjusted to the altitude. While the youth skipped up the path like a mountain goat, the old lady huffed and puffed, outraged she couldn't keep up her regular pace, on a trail not nearly as challenging as any tackled in New England. It wandered gently up another 1,000 feet through birch and aspen, at the top bringing us to a dramatic bridal veil waterfall and breathtaking views of the many mountains surrounding the town. I kept thinking that an etching of them should be on some paper currency, they were that majestic. They were also a good reminder of how small our lives are.
View from the top of Bear Creek Falls
Top part of the bridal veil
Because altitude sickness got the better of me in the afternoon, we took advantage of the town's free gondola service going partly up the ski mountain, then down the other side to Mountain Village, a new, more developmentish area with shops, restaurants and more gondolas. We wandered around a bit and saw the first of three Moncler stores we'd see in three days.
Kller views of Telluride and some of the opposing mountains from the gondola
Wee wedding at the top of the ski mountain
Both days we took our breakfast at Butcher and Baker, sitting outside and watching the world go by while enjoying killer avocado toast with chili crisp and a home made pop tart likely purchased because of the rainbow sprinkles on top. On our second morning, we had a wiz through the friendly and pretty farmer's market, then saddled up and moved on.
Flowers in Telluride are insanely healthy and huge
Loved this bumper sticker
yet again, i just wrote much praise for your pictures and stories and managed to screw up and loose the whole damn thing -- but seems like such a solid trip for the two of you again -- as the photo of you both, expresses.....