Our First Trip to Colorado (continued)

Hiking

In Amer­i­ca, peo­ple spend most of their time dri­ving. There­fore, in my opin­ion, hik­ing is almost a cult here. Peo­ple are will­ing to trav­el great dis­tances just to wan­der in the mountains.

For­tu­nate­ly, there are many moun­tains here; even in the Ari­zona desert, there are some, though hik­ing is pos­si­ble there only out­side of sum­mer. In Col­orado, the weath­er and air are won­der­ful in the sum­mer. Our first hike didn’t go exact­ly as planned. We took a lift up the moun­tain and decid­ed to descend along a trail, but after sev­er­al hours we end­ed up on a dif­fer­ent route and had to return to the lift. The next day, we armed our­selves with a map and decid­ed to hike up the moun­tain and then descend by gon­do­la. On the sec­ond day, we cov­ered 6.5 km, enjoy­ing the beau­ti­ful scenery. I won’t say it was easy, but we were all sat­is­fied.

Telluride

On the way back, we vis­it­ed anoth­er ski resort, Tel­luride, which is also ranked among the top ten resorts in Col­orado. It is locat­ed in a moun­tain val­ley, one of the most pic­turesque places. The town is sur­round­ed by fair­ly high moun­tains, and about 20 kilo­me­ters before reach­ing Tel­luride, the road winds along beau­ti­ful forests, rivers, red rocks cov­ered with tow­er­ing pines, and small lakes. Over­all, the dri­ve was very scenic but quite wind­ing. Tel­luride itself is at the bot­tom of the val­ley, and from there you can take a free gon­do­la to a high-alti­tude vil­lage, where there are many rather pricey lifts to the ski slopes. Com­pared to Avon and Beaver Creek, I didn’t find the town very appeal­ing. It seemed cramped, small, and bustling, with nowhere to park. We didn’t have enough time to vis­it the high-alti­tude vil­lage, as we still had a long dri­ve ahead. Accord­ing to sev­er­al friends, this is the best ski resort in Col­orado. BUT it is also the most expen­sive (it shares this title with Vail and Aspen). Levy still wants to go there in win­ter, so maybe some­day I’ll share my impres­sions of it with you.

Four Corners

On our way home, we stopped at a memo­r­i­al where four states con­verge: Col­orado, New Mex­i­co, Ari­zona, and Utah. This is the land of the Nava­jo, and the enter­pris­ing locals have set up a $5 admis­sion fee per per­son. It would be nice if their ser­vice matched the price.

The Drive Home

After vis­it­ing the “Four Cor­ners,” we drove through Ari­zona for about five hours and arrived home late at night. Mark always takes his bears on trips and uses them as pillows.

Postscript

One can only speak about this trip in superla­tives. We all real­ly enjoyed it. We agreed that the moun­tains and nature are very sim­i­lar to those in the Cau­ca­sus Moun­tains. Yes, it’s always nice to take a break. Even when some­thing doesn’t go right, it fades away, leav­ing only pleas­ant memories.

We spent a week there, hiked sev­er­al times, and explored the sur­round­ings, includ­ing walk­ing around the ski town with its shops and restau­rants, which are open in the sum­mer as well. Over­all, I was very impressed with the infra­struc­ture; the trans­port runs well, there are sev­er­al good gro­cery stores, and the town is right next to the fed­er­al high­way, which makes get­ting here much eas­i­er. How­ev­er, there are a few points to con­sid­er. In the sum­mer, there’s not much to do aside from hik­ing and bik­ing, and it might be worth vis­it­ing a cou­ple of times, but the place itself could get bor­ing quick­ly. In win­ter, it must be great here, but very expen­sive, and due to its prox­im­i­ty to the high­way, it can get quite crowded.

After our trip to Col­orado, my kids gath­ered all the pho­tos and ordered a pho­to album from Cost­co. Levy spent two evenings putting it togeth­er; Cost­co pro­vides tem­plates for lay­out on their web­site, and then he sub­mit­ted the order online. Now I occa­sion­al­ly flip through the album and admire the views. We also brought back a twig of juniper picked from the moun­tain­side, and Levy infused vod­ka with it 🙂

We also rent­ed bikes there. Now they’ve jumped in and bought them­selves bikes. They were think­ing of get­ting one for me, but I cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly refused. If nec­es­sary, I could bor­row my daugh­ter’s bike for a bit. They found a girl for rides. I end­ed up with a few bruis­es from rid­ing in Col­orado 🙂 I man­aged to talk them out of buy­ing a bike for me at least. In this heat, we real­ly only need more bikes. How­ev­er, it sud­den­ly got much cool­er this week: instead of 47°C, it’s down to 37 – 38 🙂