Swooning Over the San Juans

Our weekend trip in the San Juan mountains to Ridgway, Telluride and Ouray, CO

Blue Lakes Trail / Ridgway, CO

At the beginning of August Tyler and I were planning out the month when we realized we only had one free weekend left in Colorado. We both knew we wanted to do a weekend away in a new part of the state but the question was - where? I mentioned that Telluride was on my list of places to visit. The next day, Tyler had completely booked our trip. We seem to have found our traveling groove - Tyler enjoys looking up routes to take, planning the logistics and booking hotels; while I enjoy the *fun* things i.e. finding the best restaurants/ice cream shops, looking for cute local spots and planning what we will actually do on our trips.

We headed to our hotel in Montrose after work on Friday. Saturday morning we woke up early to hike at Blue Lakes Trail in Ridgway. This hike was rated "hard" on AllTrails and it proved to be just that. The incline was steep but our reward was well worth it. After about 2 hours of hiking we reached the first of three Blue Apline Lakes (the first is the most blue!). We have truly never seen something SO beautiful before - it seemed unreal. We read that there are different minerals in the water that cause the stunning turquoise blue color. Once again, we were just in awe of what beauty God gives us to enjoy.

After resting and taking in the scenery, we hiked up a little bit higher on the mountain to see the view looking down at the lake. If we had more energy and time we would have loved to hike to all three of the lakes - maybe next time! The hike to all three lakes is just over 5 hours/8.7 miles and we were already slightly behind schedule for our afternoon in Telluride.

Telluride

In Telluride we had planned to hike Bridal Veil Falls (the tallest free falling waterfall in Colorado) - but unfortunately the afternoon rain came early so we decided to wait out the storm. Telluride has the cutest gondola that begins downtown and takes you to three stops within the town including a mid-mountain stop for skiing/hiking, mountain village (the base of Telluride ski resort with super nice restaurants and boujie shopping) and the mountain market (grocery store and parking garage are here). It shouldn't be hard to guess which stop we spent time at ;) We (I) got a couple of cute souvenirs to take home. Downtown Telluride is my new favorite mountain town - it reminded me of Charleston, SC (with the addition of mountain views) between the old beautiful architecture and luxurious feel.

After wandering around downtown and the gondola we attempted to hike Bridal Veil Falls again as the storm had passed. We pulled into the parking lot and noticed it was nearly empty - a sheriff deputy told us that it was closed for the day and that we needed to leave. We were very curious as to why it was suddenly closed - the next day we read that there was a mudslide on the trail and that 15 hikers were stranded until they received help from authorities (no one was injured!). While we were bummed to have missed the hike, we are thankful that we missed a dangerous situation.

We ate dinner in Ridgway at a western-themed cafe, True Grit. Lucy enjoyed attention from the guests and staff while we enjoyed drinks and some really good macaroni and cheese.

Ouray

On Sunday we headed to Ouray to drive on the Million Dollar Highway, see Cascade Falls and explore downtown Ouray. The Million Dollar Highway is 25 miles of mountain-hugging roads through the San Juans from Ouray to Silverton. It was an amazing drive with incredible views - the San Juan Mountains were much taller and rockier than the mountains we are used to outside of Denver. We loved seeing the variety of mountains out west and hope to drive the Million Dollar Highway in the fall sometime.

Cascade Falls is a little waterfall within walking distance of downtown. The town of Ouray was beautiful with the mountain back drop - it had an old-timey feel with many unique shops. Ouray is known as the "Switzerland of America" because of the high mountains rising on three and a half sides of the town.

Sunday afternoon we headed back to Castle Rock for me to begin my last week of my current contract! We are feeling happy and sad at the same time (cue Kacey Musgraves) - we are so excited for our next adventure but will miss Colorado so, so much!

Thank you for sharing in our travels :)

The Wandering Wrights

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