A Trip to Telluride, CO

Oct 13, 2019

It’s evening and cold outside. We checked in the hotel, Victorian inn and took some rest. Our plan is to go to the mountain village before sunset.

The gondola service consists for four stations. The journey begins at Telluride station and you can view the beauty of the town from above. Then it reaches the San Sophia station on top which is more than 10,000 feet elevation. You can get off here if you want and enjoy the restaurant or do hiking. From this station, you will descend to the Mountain Village and drop you off at the Gondola plaza. Here you can walk through the Mountain village or you can take the next gondola and take a ride to the Mountain market or Mountain village town hall.

We decided to go to the mountain village and come back. We first went to the San Sophia station. Along the way we saw some snow that was going downhill like a snow cloud had only snowed at that certain in spot. Later we found out that a Ski resort has gathered the remaining snow and groomed (spread) the snow in a certain way so the customer could ski. And I thought it was Bigfoot 😉. Then we stopped at the Gondola plaza. We looked and watched as the people in the bike park did awesome stunts. I think I even saw a person that looked like chewabacca riding around the woods. Then we went to the next station but we didn’t get stop there, instead we came back to the Gondola plaza and took the gondola back to the town. Since it was snowing the previous day, the view was not as beautiful as last year.

It’s not the sunset yet and we decided to explore the town. It was cold, so first we went to a coffee shop to have a hot coffee.

After the coffee, we were recharged and ready for the walk. We walked through the street enjoying the cool weather. There were bicycles parked in the designated areas and my sister wanted to ride one 😉

We reached the Telluride town park and there is children’s play area and large field where I played with my sister for some time. It was getting dark, so we decided to go back to our room.

It was too cold, so we rushed to hotel. The next day, my dad’s plan was to visit the Bridal Veil falls to shoot the sunrise. It’s an adventurous place for hiking, biking, four wheel drive, ice climb etc. There is a historic power plant that sits on top of the fall. Since it was cold outside we decided to sleep at the hotel while my dad go to the falls. It’s more of off-road driving, and our car is not a 4 wheel drive, so he stopped at some point and took some snaps and came back. Even though he couldn’t reach the waterfall, he got a nice view of it. It’s not a “water” fall now, but an “ice” fall.

Once he got back, we had our complementary breakfast. We had booked the hotel for only one night, so we need to check out and head back to San Antonio. Before we start our journey back, we decided to go and have far view of the waterfall.

We couldn’t go as far as my dad did but we got close enough to see megalith waterfall (sorry, icefall). Then we started our journey back to San Antonio. We did not go the way we came but instead we decided to go through the Million Dollar Highway route.

We passed a small town named Ouray which is known as “Switzerland of America”. Ouray is also “The Outdoor Recreation Capital of Colorado” with more than 60 activities that can occur right out your door! We stopped at the look out point and took some photos.

The lookout point has a spectacular view of the town surrounded by the San Juan Mountains. This point is lying on the million dollar highway curve and has plenty of parking spots.

Million dollar highway is part of US 550, starts from Ouray and ends in Silverton. It stretches about 25 miles. It’s challenging and hazardous to drive with no guard rails. It’s known for the amazing scenery, high elevation, steep cliffs and narrow lanes. There are multiple view points in the sides of the highway where we can stop and enjoy the view.

As we passed the the road we saw a river that was also frozen. When I looked at it, it seemed like it was contaminated with the element sulfur. It really did because the ice and the water that melted were yellow. Along with the yellow river there was this clear amber colored stuff stuck on a small wood piece. I did not take it because one: It was far away on a ledge downhill and if I tried to take it I would have fell down on the river. The other reason I did not try to take it is because it would have been bad if I took it.

We continued our journey and headed to Silverton. We stopped at the nearest gas station so we could refuel our car. We also bought some chips and peanuts. When my dad was filling the gas tank, I heard the sound of an old steam train coming. When I looked back I was correct, but the steam was not going the way you would imagine. It was going straight up and not horizontally.

We could not take the picture of the railway engine. After filling the gas tank we resumed our journey to Durango then to San Antonio. As we climbed “elevation” and entered the next “high”way 😉 , we saw a river with an outer ice shell. We stopped there and tried to break it’s ice shell.

After some failed attempts on breaking its shell we hit the road again. We stopped at an old mine and enjoyed some time there. As we continued on the journey we decided to go to the next viewpoint.

Our next stop was Molas pass. We stopped there and went up to the viewpoint. There we learned that the mountain Dotsero maar was an old volcano that erupted in 2200 BCE almost 4200 years ago, and it is the youngest out of the four in colorado.

After that we got on the road and stopped at a place to eat our lunch. It was a piece of bread and cheese put together, Ta-da bread-cheese.

This time, we could not see much fall colors like in 2018. In 2018 we had come to Telluride and we got to see lot of fall colors. But this time it’s not as beautiful because it snowed the previous day.

We resumed our journey and stopped again after some time because we saw a ranch where two horses were running, but part of the ranch was concealed under some trees and the horses ran under the mini forest. We could see some fall colors here though.

Also the ranch had a for sale sign on its fields. We got into the car and did not stop till it was night because my mom and dad was tired, so we parked the car in a picnic area and we slept for some time. The next day morning around 11 AM, we reached home waiting earnestly for our next trip.