Telluride and Kristin's Wedding

After Arches, we headed off to Telluride, which was only about 3 hours away. I had been back in December, and perhaps you'll recognize some of the shots again! The trip was for Kristin and Wil's wedding and we had a great time with everyone and the trip was full of activities. I don't think I've ever been to a wedding that had activities for so many days - it was great! The day after we got there, we took the gondola up from Telluride to the mountain village. The town of Telluride is so beautiful and very cute with a lot of older, colorful homes. I don't like the mountain village as much because it's very new and just like any other ski towns you go to. But Telluride has a lot of class! Up at the top, Scott and I found a boulder to climb (with a little help of foot and hand holds in the rock). It wasn't all that high, but I was still a bit scared without a rope.























I'm including a few pictures to show the difference between Telluride in the winter and summer. These first were at a very similar spot on the mountain across from the ski mountain. The red rocks came through in both the winter and summer! The next has a different group of people in the two pictures, but is the same spot atop a black diamond route. I didn't go down in winter or summer! The third is the same group of girls who went up in December for wedding planing (that ended up being more skiing) and then again a couple of days before the wedding.





















I had headed to the Telluride airport to pick up Carol and James and caught this picture. This airport is the highest in elevation in the US and James said it was quite a flight flying in with the plane bumping around. I'm not sure I could've handled it, but I'm sure it gave some night sights. There was a BBQ in the park on Thursday night and it was a perfect backdrop for a nice evening to get together with everyone who was in town. After the BBQ, we headed back to the girls' house that used to be a brothel back in the day. It still has the red lights and everything red insight - it was quite a house! We meet some very cool guys that night that I'll include in the next post after this.






















Kristin and I went on a beautiful hike on Friday, but unfortunately I didn't have my camera. You'll just have to take my word for it! On Friday night, there was the rehearsal dinner with lots of really yummy food and deserts - since Kristin is such an amazing cook, she knows how to pick other good cooks! There were lots of really nice speeches and I think the soon to be bride and groom loved all of the love in the room. Afterwards, a lot of us headed up to this fancy bar atop one of the mountains where they had mine and Scott's favorite new beer - called Delirium Tremens - on tap! If you get a chance to try it out, I definitely recommend it. Scott and Nancy's brother, Jeff and I enjoyed lots of this yummy beer while most others drank fancy wine.



















On Saturday, before the wedding, Nancy and I took a beautiful hike up to the falls that in the winter, we saw was frozen. I'm including both pictures again here. The hike was pretty tough and very uphill, but it felt good to get out there and it was so beautiful all around us. If you have the right kind of car, you can actually drive up almost to the falls and then hike more, but we just hiked up to the falls. The views looking out on Telluride and the waterfalls were breathtaking.




















The wedding itself was definitely one of the most beautiful I've ever been to. The mountains in the distance, the ponds on the property, the cloud formations constantly changing while we were there.... incredible (not to mention the bride!) There was a lot of celebrating and dancing and eating and drinking and I think everyone had a great time. The bride and groom even seemed to be loving it and seemed nice and relaxed! Scott one some money with the guy by winning the bet for the length of the wedding - 15 minutes!
























We didn't do much on the long drive back since it was about 14 hours, but we did stop at the 4 corners since it's the only place where 4 states meet. I had one limb in each of Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico.