Telluride, Day 2

The next day, we had a great Italian lunch in a courtyard restaurant before going hiking. We then trekked up a steep climb to the bottom of Cornet Waterfall. Afterwards, we soaked in the lodge's hottub and had a picnic dinner out by the creek near our room. Then we rode up to San Sophia, a 10,000 ft mountain top that separates Telluride valley from Mountain Village valley, and watched the sun set. After we had pastries for dessert down in Telluride, we rode the gondola in the dark and marveled at the starry night. If you couldn't tell, we had a GREAT time on our trip! I love seeing the plethora of creation that God has laid out for us - truly He is glorious and beautiful!

Enjoying the flowered meadow by our lodge

Gondola portrait!

Cornet Waterfall

View of the mountains from the waterfall

View of Telluride from San Sophia

Front of our lodge as seen from the gondola

Gorgeous, gorgeous!!

Telluride, Day 1

After hiking our way through Utah, we drove over to Telluride, Colorado. The initial plan was to stay for one day and then drive down to northern AZ and camp for the last night of our trip. But 10 minutes after we arrived in Telluride, we looked around at our swank lodge, smelled the fresh pine and aspen, listened to the creek outside our room, looked back at one another and said "we're staying another night!" This place in the summer was exactly the kind of escape from the heat and desert that we were looking for. The highs were in the 70s, it rained in the afternoons and we slept with our windows opened, falling asleep to the sounds of the mountain forests and rivers...ok, I need to stop or I'm going to get sad that we're no longer there! We stayed at Mountain Lodge, which is located in the town of Mountain Village, being connected to Telluride via gondola. The gondola ride is approximately 10 minutes over the mountain - you can see the paths carved out for the winter skiing season. It had rained just before we arrived, so several waterfalls were visible, one of which we hiked up to the following day.

If you look closely, a waterfall is cutting down the rocks toward the top of the picture.
This is the waterfall we hiked to the following day.

The view outside of our lodge room!

Mountain Lodge -where we stayed. This is taken from the gondola.

The gondola ride going down to Telluride.

Canyonlands National Park

Canyonlands was described to us as "the Grand Canyon, but without the crowds." Well, it lived up to its description. It definitely wasn't as large as the Grand Canyon, but had the same look. Gorgeous rock formations, rivers cutting through the canyons, and desert landscapes all created majestic views. There was one arch - Mesa Arch - that gave us some great photo ops. One of the coolest parts of the day were the thunderstorms that built all around us, threatening to spill over. We drove from one overlook to another, trying to escape the rain...fortunately, we drove away from the clouds and managed several hours of sightseeing before we got hit.

The rain is coming!

Grand View Overlook

Mesa Arch

Arches National Park

We ventured up to Utah a couple of weeks ago and spent time at two national parks, the first of which is Arches. Amazing landscapes, varying sizes & shapes of arches, beautiful blue skies, hiking galore...a great place to visit in the summer. But seriously, be prepared for lots of hiking if you go. Many of the arches are not directly off the main road - you have to walk a good deal of the way to view these awesome structures. I'll try and add at least one photo from each arch - they were all incredibly unique. Jason's favorite was Landscape Arch & mine was North Window.

Landscape Arch

View looking through Pine Tree Arch

Tunnel Arch

Thunderstorms came across the park all afternoon,
giving us a show of some awesome rainbows

Delicate Arch

The Spectacles - North & South Windows

Turret Arch

Jason leaning against the side of North Window -
gives you an idea on how big these are!

North Window Arch

AZ House

It's finally here...the blog entry with our new house pictures! We were blessed with a house that is beyond what we ever hoped for when we moved out here. This was a new construction house, so I'll post before/after pics. The 'before' was when we viewed the house with our realtor and the 'after' speaks for itself.

Hallway looking into the living room and dining room is on the left.

Dining room

Bedroom and opening into bathroom

Sitting area in bedroom

Bedroom view from rotunda area

Rotunda area looking into bedroom

Bathroom - vanity on left and on right
(good for a marriage!)

Living room view from the kitchen