This is Telluride

Here is a perfect example of the strange uniqueness of Telluride. This is a hang glider that landed in the city park a few minutes later, gliding over a massive beaver lodge less than 50 yards from downtown Telluride.

Meanwhile, people were tubing on the stream which runs along the south side of town, within a stone's throw of the city streets.

Telluride Realty

The prices on the houses in Telluride were astronomical. There was a corner lot house, around 1200 square foot, that was $875,000. There was a run down house that was also for sale, that looked like it had not been updated ever.

We walked through a back alley and found a garage that had been shingled with old licence plates from the 40s and 50s.

Yankee Boy Basin

The trailhead to climb Mt. Sneffels was at the end of the road through Yankee Boy Basin.

The road was surprisingly bad for something that was rated as pretty easy.

The undercut portion of the road was very unique and the view at the end with the vivid rainbow made it all worthwhile.

Money Shot

This is one of my favorite pics for the vacation.

Indian Chief Silhouette

This rock formation was up at Ophir Pass. See if it doesn't look like an Indian Chief to you, too.

Ophir Pass

I looked at the shorter ways of getting from Telluride to the other side of the mountains.

There was the pass through Tomboy, the ghost town above Telluride, and the road that came out at Bridal Veil Falls, the Black Bear Pass. Both were said to be tough, but Black Bear was listed as the worst 4WD road in the state.

I saw another pass, Ophir, just a few miles south, so we decided to give it a try.

It had a long shelf that cut across the face of a scree field that was simple a safe, yet terrifying.

The pass itself had cool snow banks and lots of almost tame Rock Chucks. It was a great little ride.

Water Stop

It didn't matter where we were, if it was near water, Zach needed to throw rocks in.

Aspen Ridge

We stayed in this sweet condo in Mountain Village. Andrea found it at a big discount since it was off season. It had three stories, three bedrooms and a full kitchen and was surrounded by aspens.

Zach liked the balcony that had aspen trees right next to it. He liked to reach through and pull aspen leaves off and drop them to the ground.

He also liked to get on the inside balcony and throw things off of it to someone below. It was one fun place

Rocky Mountain High

The Medical Marijuana debate is over in Telluride. We found two places where you can get medical marijuana and other places where you can buy pipes or other paraphenalia to smoke it.

Telluride is dripping in money. It's not like Aspen, where they raped the countryside then jacked the value of the property through the roof and made you feel like all the beauty was gone and you can't afford to be here. Telluride is a place you can't afford to be, but it feels like a place where you could hang out and relax.

There were many comments about the people being stuck up, which didn't strike me as quite right. After we wandered around for a while, the next comments were that the people were unaware of the other people around them. This perception started when we noticed that people did not seem to get out of your way on the sidewalk, and almost seemed to walk right at you without noticing you.

After a while, I started looking into the eyes of the people on the street, and it occurred to me that these people were not stuck up or oblivious due to some sense of superiority, they were stoned.

Ridge Walk

Telluride's Gondola gives you a sweet way to cheat gravity.

You take the Gondola to the top and you are on a ridge where you can relatively quickly walk up to a 13,000 foot peak by walking straight up wide flat ski runs and well groomed trails.

The walk keeps you in view of Telluride and Mountain Village through most of the walk, and provides a fantastic vista of the airport, the cluster of fourteeners to the southwest, and the treacherous passes over the box canyon to the east of Telluride.

Some of the ski runs, now covered by flowers and grass, and peppered with rocks and boulders, looked terrifying to think of going down at high speed. You have to remember that it will all be covered with soft snow, but still, some of the runs were very steep and narrow.

When we got to the top, there were very dire warning signs to skiers, telling them not to ski off the cliff to the north. There was also a wonderful ski lift tower that you could see an amazing view off of.