Telluride, Colorado

We're sitting here in the public library in Telluride, Colorado! This town is absolutely beautiful. We are surrounded on all sides by lush green mountains. One of them even has an enormous waterfall facing town!

After we last wrote, we went to Kulani's extended family's house for a barbeque. He made us some of the yummiest beef brisket we have ever had, as well as a very delicious salad! After eating our fill, we headed back to our motel for a great night's sleep. We headed off the next morning excited that we had a 1,000 foot climb, followed by relatively flat terrain for nearly 60 miles to Dolores, Colorado. Our elevation map fooled us, however, because while we did not change elevation we rode up and down and up and down some very rolling hills. Drew affectionately referred to them as 'bouncy'. Even still, it was a nice break from the steep Utah mountains! Also, we came through some very pretty and expansive farmland, which we imagine is similar to what we might see next week as we head towards Kansas.

In Dolores, we had burgers at the Hollywood bar, a true local experience. After a night of camping at the local RV park in this very small mountain town, we set off for an awesome day towards Telluride. The first 1o miles were completely flat (it really was!), and we rode along the fast flowing Dolores river. The river kept the temperature down, and it was so nice to finally be surrounded by trees and water again. We slowly started uphill, but the grade was so shallow that it was sometimes even hard to notice that we were going uphill, aside from the fact that our speeds were very low. We call them 'false flats'. Our energy remained high throughout the day, partially due to the terrain, and partially due to the beautiful views we saw as we rounded every turn. Our final push up Lizard's Head pass was supposed to be quite a bit steeper, but it turned out to be nothing compared to some of the hills we came over in Utah. It was great to get to the top and actually feel like we still had some more energy left in our legs! At this point, we are also feeling like we are in much better shape than when we left San Francisco 3 weeks ago. I think yesterday would have been unimaginable had we not spent the last 3 weeks climbing mountains on our bikes!

We arrived in Telluride around 4pm last night, and we are enjoying our day off! We stayed in a motel last night, and treated ourselves to some very delicious mexican food in town. Today, we transferred our gear to a town campsite where we will be staying tonight and then set off for our various adventures. We have a bunch of bike maintenance planned for the afternoon, including replacing some of our tires that have begun to wear through the tread after over 1,300 miles of riding (can you believe it?). Next weekend when we take our next day off, we will be just under 1/2 way done with our trip. Sometimes we feel like it is flying by, and other times we feel like our long days will just never end. Either way, I think we will all look back fondly at the challenges we are facing.