Continued from Hiking Moab Utah post.

Day 4 –  During breakfast on day 4 my guide informed me that we completed about 30 miles of hiking in 3 days. I popped the blisters the night before so my feet were feeling like resting up a bit on the fourth day.  The guides idea for this day involved driving so I was really looking forward to resting up in the car while getting a tour of the cities and towns outside of Moab. I was given the choice of more Utah desert slick rock or Telluride, CO mountains.  I pondered quite a while before settling on mountains since the previous day hike was super hot AND I had never visited Colorado.

The drive was about two hours each way.  My guide drove through tiny mountain towns and through wide open spaces until the mountain peaks converged and Telluride was upon us. We started up main street while I hung my head out the window looking in all the little shop windows.  The road started to wind up into the hills towards some amazing waterfalls but we came to a halt as the road was being worked on and we could go no further.  Instead of waterfalls we parked the car and walked back into town along a city walking path.  The path itself was such a welcomed change of pace as my blisters were still recovering. Plus the trail wound through the fall colored trees lighted with bright yellow and oranges; A completely different scene from the red slick rock in Moab.

I walked straight into town where people were out and about on a sunny Thursday afternoon. I was surprised by the number of people walking around and also the number of dogs to people ratio.  It was about a 2:1 ratio.  Every other person had a dog and not just any dog, the most well behaved dogs live in Telluride. I swear.  I literally saw a girl on a bike, very happily riding down the middle of the road with her young dog following behind her nicely with no leash.  The dog didn’t even notice the other dogs on the street or the cars wizzing by as they passed.  Aside from the dogs, my next thought was GONDOLA!  I entered the gondola nervously as my guide proceeded to tell me we were going up to 10,000 ft.  I’m not sure if it was the fact that I hadn’t eaten or if it was the guide’s information but as we approached to the top I started to feel the effects of the elevation.  I choose to continue on the gondola instead of getting off at the top and rode down to the other side into Mountain Village.  We only walked around Mountain Village for about 10 minutes as it was d-e-a-d dead.  Back up and over the 10,000 ft mountain back into Telluride for lunch.  Lunch was by far the best middle eastern food I’ve ever had and better yet, it was served out of a trailer. Beef Shish-Kebab and Baba Ganouj.  After lunch we took it easy and strolled back to the van as a storm started to roll in.

When we arrived back in Moab the storm was in effect therefore I decided not to do the evening hike in the rain. Rain is bad!  Instead I took a trip to the hot tub with a few local Moab brews while relaxing in the storming autumn sprinkles.  Another perfect day!

Day 5 – This was the last day in Moab.  My guide took me to one last spot that overlooked the area; Dead Horse Point was a beautiful lookout over Cataract Canyon and Islands in the Sky area of Canyonlands National Park, still closed.  This viewpoint was the last scene I was honored to experience in the beautiful area.  I will be back next year!