So this is our last day in the rockies... pretty sad despite the tough climbs. The scenery is beautiful and there was a lot of rain at lizards head pass but it was still really cool. We finished off the day in Dolores and went to the Dolores River Brewing Company. Awesome place. I suggest anyone who likes beer check them out.
Telluride is a really cool place. A lot of shops but it would really be cool to snowboard here. These pictures are taken from the top of one of the mountains of Telluride and one of the trail signs. The gondola was free. There is so much to do here if you're into extreme sports. We even bouldered a little bit at Gravity Works for $11. We even checked out the brew pub Smugglin Joes and tried some beer from the Telluride brewing company. The Juniper Rye at Joes was really good, I've been noticing a lot of breweries selling the Juniper Rye or some other kind of rye beer. So we'll be heading out to climb Lizards head tomorrow toward Dolores. That will be a nice climb almost as high as Monarch.
This is blue mesa lake hydroelectric plant. This and 2 other hydro plants in the area generate 246,000 kW, total. The water is so blue too. The west side of the continental divide has so many fewer trees.
We're in Gunnison now and we just rode over Monarch pass. 11,312 feet elevation. I was sweating at about 9000 feet and then the temperature dropped about 30 degrees then it started raining and that turned to hail. Lightning was striking less than a mile away.There was a river of water running down the side of the road and the road was covered in ice. The excess water running down the cliff sides was causing rocks to fall onto the road (small avalanches). But we all made it up safely, just a little cold. I dont have any pictures of the road conditions during the storm but i have some nice shots of the road from 12,012 ft afterwards. I'll upload those photos later. So here's a photo of some mountain goats we saw. They scale the cliffs effortlessly!
We made it to Pueblo and took a day off to see the city. They have some good Mexican restaurants and the Shamrock Brewery. We also celebrated Tamar's birthday with some fried ice cream. We had lunch at Bingo Burger which uses locally raised food and serves locally brewed beer. We're camping at Arkansas Point campground just west of Pueblo. We can see a little bit of the Rockies right now since the weather has been cloudy and rainy today. We'll see what we can see tomorrow, but we'll be diving into those climbs tomorrow. We should be camping in Howard CO tomorrow night and making it to Telluride in the next few days. The weather will be cooler so i just hope it doesn't rain too much.
