Tiff & Jared's adventures

Ouray – aka the Switzerland of America, is known for adventure sports in the summer and skiing in the winter. It was a beautiful town in a mountain valley, and we stayed at a campground outside of town. The first night we got there, we went to the visitor center and got information about the Blue Lakes trail we planned to hike. Then, we went down the street to Mr. Grumpy Brewery. It was probably the most eccentric brewery we’ve been to and it was awesome. It had old school games, a rope running the length of the brewery with a bell to pull if service was needed, and a bunch of snarky comments written on separate signs. Signs like “ABV square root of 97” or “brewery opens at 4, unless I’m not here, then it’ll be open later”. The beer was really good too.

After we each had a beer, we went to our KOA campground where they had BBQ and live music night! We waited in line and got brisket and chicken fried steak while listening to the music and watching people dance.
The next day, we woke up early to get to Blue Lakes Trail. We had to drive 9 miles up a windy and unkept country road to get to the trailhead. Once there, we packed our lunch and got ready for the 8 mile hike. Whoa, the beginning was excruciating as we had lots of elevation to ascend. We definitely needed to take multiple breaks, at least I did. A few hours later, we made it to the Blue Lake. At lake level, the water didn’t look too impressive. The background was beautiful though, set in front of snow covered peaks.

After snacking, we decided to hike up a few hundred more feet to get a better aerial view of the lake. Now this was impressive. At the level we climbed to, with wildflowers all around us, we were able to look down directly into the lake. It was the bluest lake we had ever seen, and it didn’t even look real.

After taking some pictures, we climbed up to the second alpine lake. This one wasn’t as impressive, but was intriguing because the glacial ice was still running across the surface. We walked around a while longer, taking pictures and climbing up hills. We then turned around in order to get to Telluride.

Once we got to Telluride, we went to a Telluride Brewing Co as we waited for our reservation at Brown Dog Pizza. Telluride Brewing was super cool – people were eating outside and playing cornhole. We got a flight of five beers and had the best bourbon barrel-aged brown ale we’ve ever had. After finishing the flight, we went into town to eat our pizza – award winning pizza. The menu boasted of its Detroit-style pizza and awards won at international competitions. We ended up getting a pizza, half Brooklyn Bridge and Half Fig Balsamic. Pretty good, we’d give it a 4.0. Once we finished dinner, we walked down to the town gondola. Fun fact – Telluride is the only city in the country with a free gondola system. It runs from the town to Mountain Village where skiers congregated in the winter. The purpose was to make possible a free transportation system and diminish air pollution between the two cities. We rode it to Mountain Village and watched as the sun set over the valley town. The whole trip probably took about twenty minutes. We then made it back to our car and drove to our Ouray campground.

Crested Butte

Our initial impression wasn’t great as we arrived into town when it was cloudy, rainy and cold. We went to the visitor center and got information on hikes we planned on doing the following day. We were informed that the wildflowers unfortunately hadn’t bloomed yet. The town had experienced the heaviest snowfall in the past thirty years, and it also hadn’t rained in over a month.

The following day, we still decided to hike Rustler’s Gulch, hoping that the wildflowers had secretly bloomed overnight. No such luck. We hiked 6 miles, while seeing some wildflowers but not nearly what we were expecting. Two locals informed us that in full bloom, the meadow is the most beautiful location in the valley. Bummer that we were a few weeks early. Oh well, we still got our exercise for the day!

We headed back into town because I had been talking about Third Bowl ice cream for two days. The shop served locally made Crested Butte ice cream and the flavors were somewhat eccentric. We waited in line and ended up ordering a flight of six flavors. We got blueberry cobbler, guava, fruity pebbles, cinnamon honey, honey lavender and raspberry smore’s. The blueberry cobbler literally tasted just like it had come out of the oven (but in frozen form). Jared and I both agree it was some of the best ice cream we’ve ever had.

All in all, we would go back to all the towns. Ouray was perfect because of the Blue Lakes trail, Telluride because of the gondola and charm, Crested Butte because of the brightly colored shops set against the Butte.