Viking Lodge Telluride

... zilla all weekend. And she was. But it was all in good fun! The hike up to the lake was STEEP and strenuous, and there wasn't a lot of oxygen at 12,000 feet, but it was worth the pain. The upper and lower Ice Lake basins were incredible! There were so many vivid colors... rolling hills carpeted in green, red, and yellow... lichen covered boulders... silver creeks... jagged gray peaks... and the bluest lake I have ever seen ...

... of hiking and sight seeing throughout the town, and ate and drank the way a group our size and age would be expected to.

Sorry I don't have more pics of the group, I was mesmerized by the scenery!

Maybe when I get together with them next I'll have some to add.

Hope all are well!

... was both very
interesting and sad. I loved seeing the Indian head dresses made of
feathers and playing in a Tipi (teepee). I also loved the cradle
boards that the babies were strapped to for travel on their mothers
back. They had beautiful bead work to determine if the baby was a boy
or girl. The boys had geometric shapes and the girls flowers and
such. I was sad to see how the early US government broke their
promise to the Indians 4 times in various ...

... through a really beautiful area. The road passes the town of Dunton- apparently it's actually a privately owned ghost town, so I don't think you can walk around it or anything. But the whole stretch of road was really nice, Silas and I were sort of hating the people who live there! (Okay, I'll admit it- we were jealous of them!) But we saw a couple campgrounds and several hiking trails, so I'm sure we're going to be going back there soon.

... view of mountains in 3 directions. Ethan, Connie and Wade drove up to Yankee Boy Basin (4 wheel drive mountain pass) while Antoinette and Amanda relaxed at the hotel. Nice side trip. Would love to go back and check out some of the other mine sites and tunnels. More pics to come later.

... started.  Turns out it wasn't until 11.  Oops, I don't know where I got 10:00 from. 
  Anyway, the parade started and at first it was really slow- I was starting to think that maybe it wasn't going to be that great, but then it picked up and it ended up being a really fun parade, especially for a town of that size. 
  When it was over everyone seemed to head to the park at the end of town- that's where the volunteer firemen had their BBQ set up.  We didn't go ...

... showed us the tools they used to mine and basically the workday of a miner. The mine had been mined for silver, gold, copper, among other metals. The guide told us that it never really was a good mine as it didn’t have enough of the minerals to make money. Our guide had been a contractor and had worked in the mine briefly.

Silverton was a cute little mining town and we ...

... but the railway buffs and photographers in the group spent most of the 3 hour ride in the open sided car behind us. Jack spent the whole ride with Gil's video camera, sticking his head out of the window and shooting scenery till his eyes were watering from the smoke and cinders coming back from the engine. The scenery was fabulous, despite (or perhaps because of) the rain ...

... On Time." Good news knowing that yesterday they were both canceled due to whether. Sure enough, ours had the same fate. About 45 minutes before the flight's departure, we were notified that our flights were no longer in service. The gate directed everyone to customer service, and like a scene from The Amazing Race reality TV show, the whole plane rushed over to that counter. We were somewhat lucky ...

... Saturday, June 17 10:00 AM - Gates Open 10:15 - 11:30 - Band Contest Finals 11:45 - 12:45pm - Tony Rice & Bryan Sutton 1:00 - 2:15 - Shawn Camp 2:30 - 3:45 - John Cowan Band 4:15 - 5:30 - Yonder Mountain String Band 5:45 - 6:00 - Telluride Troubadour 6:15 - 7:30 - Missy Higgins 8:00 - 10:00 - The Sam Bush Band 10:30 - Midnight - Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings Sunday, June 18 9:30 AM - Gates Open 10:00 - 11:00 - Edgar Meyer & Mike ...