Telluride, Colorado - Mountain Country!!

It's hard to sum up the last week - every day feels like about 6 weeks, and I have trouble remembering the details of the previous day, even down to where we slept last night. Today it's easy, because we have a rest day here in Telluride, so it's still Telluride :)

Southern Utah was so much more than I'd ever expected. The awe-inspiring red canyons made us feel like we could cycle forever. Well, almost forever, anyway. We had an amazing time in the town of Boulder, Utah, where we all got to go home with families for our first "homestay experience". Jim, Megan, Alyssa, & I stayed with Mike Nelson, one of the park rangers from the Anasazi Museum. We got to ride his Arabian mare, rode in the back of his truck to see the incredible house he's been building for the last year, and had a really enjoyable time hanging out with him, appreciating sitting on couches instead of our bike seats. When his wife Laura and 3 year old son Zach got back from visiting family in Salt Lake City later that evening, we got a kick out of having Zach show off for us, racing around the house pantless with his new light saber. I even got to help give him his bath. It was really nice to break away from whole group for a little while to get to know some members of a community. Particularly Boulder- all the people we met were incredible!

There's so much to say about Utah beauty, but I'll leave it for the pictures. 2 or 3 days ago we finally made it to Colorado, after the most frigid headwind EVER leaving Blanding, UT. I wanted to cry, it was so miserably cold. But, we made it after all, and were warmly welcomed to the quaint town of Dolores, CO (pop. ~700) by Our Lady of Victory Catholic Church, who put on a marvelous pasta dinner for us. And, I might guiltily add that we double-dipped that evening; a friend of one of the other riders invited us to the Dolores Brewery for oven-fired pizza and and open beer tab. That was also mighty enjoyable.

The next morning (yesterday, Weds. 4-19) we saddled up for the 65 mile uphill battle into the Rockies to the ski resort town of Telluride. It wasn't as steep as we expected - in fact it was a pretty do-able grade such that we barely even noticed we were going up as we wound alongside the Dolores river. Only the increasing amount of snowfall on the roadside and the difficult breathing at altitude tipped us off to the climb. We summitted Lizard Head Pass at 10,222 feet - our highest yet. But not for long... in a couple of days we'll be going over Monarch Pass, which I think is about 11,300. Whew.

Telluride is a fun mountain town and its liberal inhabitants stand in stark contrast to some of the communities we stayed in through Utah. We were on the front page of the daily paper here, as well as on the radio, and there have been several lectures today - some of our riders talked to local middle schoolers about HIV/AIDS, while this evening Karen and Thomas are giving the Global Health 101 lecture here at the public library.

This is such a fun way to see the country. If you haven't checked out our video blogs yet, you should, if for no other reason than to get a feel for the stunning landscape of Utah.

Much love,
Libby