Telluride Vacation, Part 1

Last weekend, Dale, Adelaida, and I met Dale's family in Colorado for a real vacation. We rented a little house in Telluride and met up with Charlotte and with Richard, Laura, and their two girls. This was the first time for Richard and Laura to meet Adelaida, and our first time to meet their younger daughter Sarah. The three girls were quite taken with each other -- Adelaida spent quite a bit of time just looking at Elizabeth and Sarah, and Elizabeth was especially generous in providing Adelaida with toys.

In addition to playing with her cousins, Adelaida got to spend some good time with her Mamaw, who may have been a little unprepared for Adelaida's new interest in grabbing people's faces and glasses! It's hard to live so far away from our family, and this was only Charlotte's third time seeing Adelaida: she came out to visit when Adelaida was only two weeks old, then we visited her in Colorado when Adelaida was ten weeks old. Of course, Adelaida is quite different now, at six months, than she was when Charlotte saw her last at ten weeks old!

Telluride is very much a tourist town, although its high season is predominantly the winter. There are ski slopes all around the town and ski lifts up the sides of the valley. Telluride also has a free gondola that operates year-round and ferries people between the town of Telluride and Telluride's sister town of Mountain Village, located just above Telluride. The first day of our vacation, we all rode the gondola up to Mountain Village and played a round of disc golf on Mountain Village's course (actually, Dale and Richard played a round of disc golf; Charlotte, Laura, and I all played about a hole-and-a-half before deciding that the it would be a great opportunity for the boys to catch up with each other).

We enjoyed walking around Mountain Village, which has a great playground, a rock-climbing wall, a duck pond, and plazas that we used to teach Elizabeth to throw a frisbee. We ate lunch, then took the gondola back to Telluride that afternoon. When we returned to Telluride, Dale, Adelaida, and I walked through town a bit and found a wonderful farmer's market. We bought steaks, bread, and salad greens and (after a brief and much-needed afternoon nap) cooked dinner at the house.



After dinner, we all celebrated Sarah's first birthday, a few weeks early. She opened her presents (with help from her older sister), then ate her birthday cupcake, using not only her hands and mouth, but her forehead, nose, cheeks, arms, and chest. Fortunately, Laura had the foresight to strip Sarah down to her diaper before giving her the cupcake!

The next day, we took a hike in the mountains just above Telluride, up to a beautiful waterfall called Bridal Veil Falls. At only 2 1/2 years old, Elizabeth was quite a trooper on the hike, but after about an hour was tired of both being carried and walking. She, Laura, Charlotte, and Sarah headed back to the house while Dale, Richard, Adelaida, and I continued. The waterfall was very pretty, and the view of Telluride from above the falls was spectacular. We rested that afternoon, then went out to a great restaurant in town that night for dinner.

The last day of our vacation, we headed back up the gondola toward Mountain Village, but decided to ride only to the first stop, Station St. Sophia, and hike the rest of the way. It was a nice hike through aspen groves and coniferous forests, with beautiful views of the valley below. We spent some time in Mountain Village before returning back to Telluride and a relaxing evening at the house.

We really enjoyed spending time with Charlotte and with Richard and Laura and their girls, and it was nice to do it in Telluride, where things like work and housework couldn't get in the way of enjoying each other's company! I'm especially glad that Adelaida got to spend time with her cousins, Elizabeth and Sarah. Although she may be too young to remember this visit several years from now, we have pictures of the three girls together that we'll always treasure.