After our stay in Ouray we drove back to Ridgeway which is not in the mountains. but by the mountains. Then turned towards Telluride. Our B&B hosts told us to park by the edge of Telluride on the right. There is a free parking lot. Then you just walk into downtown, which seemed a little bigger that the towns we saw before. Restaurants, shops, as usual in a tourist and skiing town. But the biggest attraction is its free gondola! Nowhere else there is a free gondola as far as I have heard. Not one-ￂﾠ even two of them.ￂﾠ The first lift is very steep and a little scary. Then the gondola stops on the top of the mountain ridge:
From there the mountain bikers are riding down. There is a restaurant there with good views. Then the gondola goes down to the other side of the ridge, to the Mountain Village, which is not a village in its classical sense, but a concoction of rich condos. On the way you see the ski tracks for the winter and the surrounding mountains:
And once you get out of that gondola and you are not the one who stays in one of the condosￂﾠ you do not have much to do there. So you go to another gondola, which takes people just over the tops of the condos to a food store-ￂﾠ what a way to go shopping! 🙂 You see the lavish life style in full swing under you and that is the attraction. I guess. Also – you can hike down from the food store-ￂﾠ the hike is not steep. So here you go – taking gondolas was our fun in Telluride. Once there -we drove to the very deep end of it and saw a peculiar thing-ￂﾠ a big house built very close to a waterfall on a steep cliff, with no roads leading to it-ￂﾠ I wonder?!
I guess you have to stay in a town to fall in love with it.ￂﾠ But it would be hard to love so many towns :-).ￂﾠ So we drove out of Telluride and towards Cortez. Rt. 145 on the map is shown as a scenic road and it was. Very very scenic. But there we heavy clouds and we were tired, so we didn’t stop for every good view. However, we stopped in Rico – it has an authentic house turned into a hostel or a hotel – it was pleasant to walk in its empty corridors and hear the ghosts. It has a wild hot spring close by:
But once we came – there was a company of 5 soaking in it. so the math didn’t work for us…So we drove to Cortez where hotels on its North side are much more expensive than the ones on the South side :-). We picked American Holiday Mesa Verde Inn – it was in front of the restaurant Mi Mexico – that we remembered from long ago – and it was a good choice! The hotel was very quiet and the restaurant served very good Mexican food! We wanted to go to Mesa Verde – but after some analysis figured out that we had no time for it-ￂﾠ it takes at least a day or two to see it well, the drives are long there and you have to take excursions if you want to see at least one of the ancient houses or towns, whatever they were. So we chose to visit Howenweep NM instead. Therefore the next morning we drove on a small road through the Canyons of the Ancientsￂﾠ NM and stopped and walked in one stop. Didn’t walk much -ￂﾠ had no time. But walking on this sandstone was pleasant and it would be a good idea to stay somewhere close by there and hike and hike:
Because all this area is full of signs of Ancient Indians living there! Here is the Howenweep NM – it is a canyon where life flourished ages ago. They have a few structures still standing, as those Twin Towers, and a few mysteries still lingering:
Thenￂﾠ the drive was long…We listened to a book about Albert Einstein, a really good one, but still. We saw Mexican Hat on the way and the the Monument Valley with the place on the highway where everyone stops and takes pictures. Why – because Forest Gump stopped his long run through the US exactly there!
THen we noticed that the glorious Mittens of the Monument Valley are eroding, they have lost their ‘thumbs’ and do not look like mittens any more…
But the rock that looks like a mountain from a fairy tale -ￂﾠ still looks inspiring:
Then a little stop by this monstrosity of the Hydro power station of Lake Powel:
And we returned home to our super hot summer, to our permanent irrigation and tending our peaches and tomatoes!
There were mines along he road and descriptions of them that they mine all the possible metals here and the underground tunnels are 100 mi long…
This was a beautiful landing from a pass, with Silverton already very close:
It is also like in a goblet – all surrounded by mountains. But its ‘goblet’ is much wider that the one of Ouray’s. And so I felt much moreￂﾠ spacious there. 
Those instruments set up in a little town park had a soothing and healing sound! 
Here we ate a funnel cake! But they also have other foods, too. 
This green cross meansￂﾠ “healing with the help of weed” :-):
The is the train station – it is a famous train that goes from Durango to Silverton through the mountains and Canyons. I guessￂﾠ -it is a lot of fun! But it was not in our plans this time. On the way out of Silverton we drove a little towards Durango for the views:
You can see Silverton down below far away.ￂﾠ But the road was being fixed, there were some waits there and also it looked scarier for me that the Million Dollar road to Ouray, so we turned back to Ouray. 
All in all – Silverton is well worth of a visit whether by train or a car, and to my taste-ￂﾠ it seemed the most beautiful of all the towns we visited. But beauty is not the only reason we visit places…
and there was a road to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, but we didn’t turn towards there. And then we again found ourselves on the plains. Colorado is in our imagination a state of mountains, but it seems that mountains occupy just a little part of it in patches. Montrose is also a western cowboy town. very similar as was Gunnison. But it has a Nepalese buffet! Wow, what a loss. We were so full after our cowboy lunch. And after the drive to Ridgeway is on plains, only there you start seeing mountains. You head towards them and here you are – in a goblet called Ouray:
The main attractions of Ouray are hiking, of course, and also the hot springs! They bring the warm water from hot springs somewhere further and up the mountains and fill the new pools with it. For my joy there was a lap pool. But for soaking – there are several extensive pools of creative shapes. 
In Ouray we stayed at this Bridal Veil B&B, the left side of the duplex:
It was one of the best B&Bs we ever stayed at! WE had the whole first floor, meaning a bedroom and a bathroom and the entrance hall – how much more can we need. It was quiet, we were fed upstairs with super fancy breakfasts, which were spoiling us tremendously and kicking us out of our healthy eating habits. The owners Connie and Greg were very pleasant and informative. Connie tended for 36 orchids in their home! And Greg is a big hiker and a canioneering specialist. Here are their orchids and Connie’s breakfasts. Each day we had a different orchid on the table matched with the foods and plates served:
The pictures of Ouray are from he Primeter trail. Yes, there is a trail on the edges of the mountains surrounding Ouray. but we had no time to do the whole thing, we did only a part of it (but a scary one) till we reached the falls:
The first evening Andrei went to a hotel with a complicated German name and spent half an hour in their peculiar hot springsￂﾠￂﾠ -they have a cave under the hotel and you can enter it only if you haven’t smoked for 3 months and also if you buy a ticket :-). Smoking was not the reason I didn’t go. I just felt tired. Saved my energy for tomorrow’s swimming in the main hot sprigs pool!
Here are some pictures of Ouray town:
The building on the right is an opera house! Here is the interior of the hotel we see on the left:
We did some more hiking on the last morning, but very little, so much more is left for another time!
Very big crevices in Colorado, I would say – they are scary to those who have sensitivity to it. We also drove to Silverton for a short visit, but that is in another post!
What can be more beautiful?
So we took pictures of this small lake in the evening, in the morning and sat by it consuming its beauty! But as always in life-ￂﾠ nothing is for free. That campground had smelly toilets and a lot of mosquitoes! And no running drinking water or any water except the lake. The price – $18 per night. So we didn’t waste our time and drove down to Crested Butte to see the town and the Wildflower festival. This is what our car was showing on the way down, we never saw it before:
I will point- almost 200 miles per gallon of gas! Our little Prius-ￂﾠ we love it! WE saw the town, but we didn’t see the festival :-).ￂﾠ As there was an abundance of non-wild flowers in town – we didn’t miss it.:
As you can see – there was
All in all Crested Butte seemed to me one of the most attractive towns in Colorado. Funny as it s-ￂﾠ there is a distillery of Rum – the bring sugar canes from somewhere South to this little town crested amid mountains and peaks – and make alcohol, an interesting business venture. And you can sample the rum for free! 
The other reason I liked Crested Butte most of all -there was a number of peculiar shops, especially this one where Asian antiques were mingling with SteamPunk art:
Again – flowers and flowers.ￂﾠ 
Also – this town attracted several families form Nepalￂﾠ -therefore two-or three Nepaleseￂﾠ restaurants! Here is the Nepalese waitress we liked so much:
Whatever was left of the day we wanted to hike a little. So we drove towards where the hikes are. Andrei prepared to find them form the internet.ￂﾠ 
CRested Butte is considered a wild flower capital of Colorado, but from our small experience – nothing beats Alta area in Utah in that sense: 
They likeￂﾠ signs like this. It sais No Parking Waiting, picking up From Now and Forever…It makes hiking long 🙂 
Doesn’t this lake look like is is bending? 
And the flowers are wilting, for it was a big droughtￂﾠ then:
I love this picture:
Then we returned to our campground and started the fire to bake potatoes and Andrei’s sausages:
As I couldn’t pick the nicest picture of ‘our” lake-ￂﾠ I several of them for your judgement-ￂﾠ in the evening, in the morning:
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They looked like little tulips by the lake… And the last pic of CB:
The next day the driving was beautiful – again on Rt 12 -the very scenic Utah route, we passed through Boulder with its bird paradise lake, walked by it for a little rest:
and then through Capitol Reef NP to Green River where everybody refuels and has lunch and further to Grand Junction. All the time temperatures outside were soaringￂﾠ -up to 107F. So we didn’t even stop in any store , anywhere on our way except when we got to a cute town Hotchkiss. A book store with sculptures in front of it caught my attention:
Because we were already tired, we stopped at the first motel that was on our way, Hotchkiss Lodge:
It was a motel with breakfast, all clean, welcoming and owned by a Polish couple. There I looked that they are already have views of lower mountains. And the night there was already not hot at all, alas! The next day we drove towards Crested Butte via a small town Paonia and were stunned to see that some new Gaudi is living there:ￂﾠ 
There are creative people all over, not only in clusters, and that made me happy! There were also different kind of collections of transportation or agriculture devices:
And so we proceeded towards Crested Butte, where the Wild flower festival was expected.