/waits breathlessly for response
Forget it, I'm telling you anyway. Positioned in the middle of a box canyon, there are three ways into Telluride, but only two ways out. Two of the ways in require drives over steep mountain passes, and one of the entries is so foreboding,it can only safely be climbed INTO Telluride, and not out.
Feel free to impress your friends at your next dinner party with that little nugget of info.
Anyhoo, Lauren and I packed up the Outback Saturday morning for what was supposed to be an overnight excursion to Telluride for the Blues and Brews festival and celebration of our good pal Lori's 40th birthday. Did I write 40th? I meant thirtieth. Yeah, that'll do.
Some would say it's a waste of time for me to attend a Blues and Brews festival, since I'm already clinically depressed and currently unable to imbibe alcohol, but what do they know?
On our way out of town, Lauren took a good shot of Mt. Sopris, in all its downvalley glory. Enjoy.
The idea of the festival was to pitch a tent in the campground adjacent to the festival, so you could convene with friends and fellow party goers well into the night after the bands stopped. Here I am setting up the trusty BD tent and enjoying my last few moments of lucidity before suffering a nervous breakdown.
Why did I snap? Look, I've come a long way since this surgery, and I'm capable of doing nearly everything I could prior to May 9th. But one thing I am NOT ready for, it quickly dawned on me, was to surround myself with 3,000 sweaty hippies on the wrong side of a 72-hour bender when I'm stone sober. I'm still at the point in my recovery where sleep is invaluable, and it quickly became apparent that rest would not be readily available in our intended setting.So Lauren and I decided to bag the campout, but enjoy the festival regardless and head back to Aspen when the night wore down. Here's a view of Telluride on the way into town. It's a beautiful town, as you can see, but it has a way of making one feel a touch claustrophobic.
Here's Lauren grooving to the sounds of G Love and Special Sauce. We've traveled 2,400 miles, only to hear a guy from Philly play in Telluride. Go figure.
A shot of the festival. You couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting some dreadlocked, patchoulie scented thirty-something deeply immersed in a game of hackey sack.
With the night winding down, Lauren and I had the brilliant idea of driving an hour east and grabbing a hotel in Ouray, Colorado. I drive through Ouray all the time on the way to ski at Silverton, and it's generally considered one of the most idyllically-set towns in the US. When we arrived it was dark, so no pictures until the morning. Lauren and I grabbed a quick bite to eat, then returned to our hotel room a bit despondent that we weren't spenidng the night in the tent.
One quick trip to the car remedied that up quick.
I'll confess, while it didn't quite provide the feeling of freedom that only a night out under the stars can provide, it did cut down our chances of being ravaged by a bear in our sleep dramatically.
The next morning we were greeted by bluebird skies and a sleepy town. We grabbed a bagel, shot some pictures encompassing the entire town of Ouray, and were on our way back to Aspen.
