Day 8&9: Telluride

We woke up at Lauras- showered indoors. Clean and fluffy! Then we hit the road and drove the 3.5 hours to Telluride, CO. On the way we stopped at multiple local farm stands and wineries and bought lots of fresh veggies and did some cider amd wine tastings. Visiting them got us excited for reaching our own farm soon! We easily could have never made it to Telluride if we stopped everywhere we wanted to! However, in Telluride,  our most dear friend Boca aka Bryce Lupoli has a house in Mountain Village that he and his lovely mother Kristi were generous enough to let us stay in. It is an unbelievable place in an unbelievable location.

We rolled in around 3 and took the free gondola ride (located literally in the backyard of Bocas place) into Telluride to meet another Apogee legend, our dear friend Dylan Hoos, for a beer at a hip cafe. We chatted and caught up from our Apogee summers, since we didn't see him after our summers ended. We had a lovely time.

After catching up at The Steaming Bean we hit the grocery store and the wine store and took the gondola back up to Mountain Village. The gondola runs constantly all day until midnight and is powered by solar energy and continues to operate because of donations. Pretty awesome.

Back at the ranch we made wayyyy too much fantastic bbq chicken (using Devil's Spit BBQ sauce from Famous Dave's), a nice green bean, tomato, corn and feta salad, a delicious one pound grilled peach, and drank hard cherry cider. All local veggies! We spent the rest of the night drinking wine and relaxing in the hottub. It was a great time, enjoying the luxuries of being out of our tent! 

The next morning we enjoyed toast and jam. It was still delicious. Fortunately we also had cantelope from one of the farms we stopped at. It was advertised as the best tasting cantelope in the world (see pic). In my limited cantelope experience,  this advertisement was 100% accurate; it was amazing, juicy cantelope. We could write an entire blog post on the cantelope.

Anyways, we then took the gondola into Telluride and ran along a beautiful river trail to the base of some killer water falls. We ran back to main street and checked out some outdoors stores and bought some more groceries for dinner than night: pizza dough, mushrooms, and pesto. Make your own pizza night, woohoo! We also grabbed coffee and a tasty veggie wrap from another hip cafe called Bread another and Butcher. All local, organic stuff. So Colorado.

The rest of the afternoon we decided to explore Mountain Village and the cool little chocolate shops and whatnot. We found a happy hour and enjoyed (well, I did - Rizz did NOT) bloody marys. We lounged and played some cards the rest of the afternoon until Dylan came over for dinner. The pizzas were super tasty.

We said goodbye to Dylan and had a great Skype convo with the elusive Bryce Timm with guest star and partner in crime, William Johns III. It was great to see them, especially bryce's beard.

One more hot tub sesh and the first half of Slapshot before we hit the hay. Another wonderful day! Thanks again Bryce and Kristi for letting us stay in your gorgeous home. Can't wait to come visit again sometime soon with you both!

Tomorrow: Moab and Arches National Park.