Telluride Rides

We wanted to visit another great little Colorado mountain town while we were in the neighborhood, so we took a day trip to Telluride. We wish we would have brought the bicycles today, as this little town has great walking and bike trails.  Without our wheels, we walked along the river trail that extends the entire length of a town.

So bike riding would be fun in Telluride, but our favorite ride was the gondola.  And the very best part for budget travelers like us--all the gondola rides are free!  We got on the gondola that started along the river in the middle of Telluride, and it quickly whisked us upwards to the first stop.

That first stop was the St. Sophia Station at the top of the ski mountain.  After taking a picture for a family from Oklahoma, they took our picture.  You can see the town of Telluride in the valley below, ringed by some of the finest mountains in the San Juans.

This is a great way to hike in the mountains!  That gondola ride took us from 8,750 feet in town to 10,500 feet at the St. Sophia Mid-Mountain station without us even breaking a sweat.  The gondola does all the work of bringing us up to the high elevation so we could walk on level paths while looking at the tops of the mountains around us.  Denisa convinced Mark that she needed a picture of him looking off the backside of the mountain. 

He looked down where he was standing for the picture and realized he was in the middle of a wild strawberry patch. 

The best part of this patch was it had the largest and most berries we have ever seen.  Denisa thinks that picking wild berries is more fun than hunting Easter eggs.  They were so thick that she couldn't put her knee down in the middle of the patch or she would get strawberry stains on her capris.  The only problem is that she didn't realize this until she already had two strawberry stains.

This is a picture of part of the harvest.  They were the sweetest and juiciest wild berries we have found so far.

The gondolas are especially great for mountain bikers.  There are clips to hang bikes on the outside of the gondola, so all the bike rides can be downhill.  We definitely need to bring our bikes next time!

Eight people can fit into one gondola, and there were times when we had six other people with us.  But this ride it was just the two of us, so it was a great time for an inside picture.

The next stop on the gondola route was the Mountain Village Center.  At 9,545 feet, it is home to restaurants, shopping, and condos in a beautifully manicured area.  The day we were visiting there was also a farmer's market in the plaza.  We bought two sweet Colorado peaches and a few other things.  The hanging baskets of flowers at the Mountain Village were beautiful, and Denisa is showing off the peach that we were just ready to eat as a snack.

We also took the last gondola route to the Village Station--home to a pricy grocery store, post office and lots of condos.  Nothing picturesque, so we didn't take any pictures.  But we did jump back into those free gondolas for the trip back downhill to Telluride.

This town would be a great place for non-hikers to visit.  This is the easiest way to get beautiful high mountain views without the sweat of hiking there.

We didn’t take any of the great hikes into the mountains surrounding Telluride.  But we did get our exercise walking from one end of town to the other. There are big planters of flowers in the middle of the street, and several of the blocks were closed to traffic.  So walking might be the easiest way to get down Main Street.

At the far edge of town is the city park, where children and adults play.  It must be a little distracting to concentrate on a baseball game with this kind of scenery in the infield.  This park also houses an amphitheater for concerts, and hosts a different summer festival every other weekend of the summer.

There is a free bus shuttle called the Galloping Goose that could have returned us to our car, but then we would have missed walking by the ice cream store.  Mark might be losing weight from all our hiking, but it isn’t because he’s cutting back on desserts.  He still manages to eat ice cream every day.

We made one more trip up the gondola to go to the concert at Sunset Plaza in the Mountain Village.  Lots of people had the same idea, and this was the first time we had to stand in line to get on the chair lift.  It was also the only time we actually reached the maximum of 8 people in the gondola.

 It was a beautiful evening for a concert on the mountain.  We were a little disappointed that the music wasn’t conducive to two-stepping.  That’s one thing we have noticed since changing states—Colorado doesn’t two-step as much as Texas.  But we have also noticed that Colorado hosts more mountains and we are still enjoying our summer here!