*wave* from Telluride

Hello from Telluride. I'm sitting here in our wonderful house with a tiny bit of my attention on Casino Royale (the boys are watching it). I just finished working on our vacation puzzle for the evening. Since I'm such a puzzle-working master, I've decided to do this one without looking at the box to make it more challenging.

We had an almost effortless drive from Dallas to Albuquerque on Saturday, except for the ridiculous hail storm we encountered less than 60 miles from our destination. We had a nice dinner that night at a little Mexican place in the old historic downtown and hit the sack pretty early (time change helped with that) in our semi-ghetto hotel.

We were on the road by 7am on Sunday, driving to Mesa Verde. We arrived around noon, got our campsite in order, and then saw some sights. We did a self-guided tour of the Spruce Tree House cliff dwellings and then did a neat hike on the Petroglyph Point Trail, which took us by some really neat petroglyphs. The hike was also very uncrowded - we barely saw anyone - and was a good way to adjust to the altitude (Mesa Verde is about 7,000+ ft elevation). That night we cooked hot dogs on our campfire and enjoyed the beauty of the place. Our campsite was in a grove of oak trees on side and a meadow on the other. We saw deer in our meadow two different times. It rained some that night, but nothing too major.

We packed up our campsite on Monday morning and hit up the campground's pancake breakfast. We decided we weren't in the mood for any of the guided tours and had seen enough of the Native American sights, so we took a hike at the north end of the park, the Park Lookout Trail, which took us to the top of a mesa where we could see just about ... everything! We also saw a couple rabbits and the footprint and scat of some sort of cat. We were the only people on the trail the entire time, and we enjoyed cool, cloudy weather that made it quite pleasant. After that we left Mesa Verde and drove to Telluride, arriving there in time for lunch.

Our house here is lovely - the perfect size for the five of us (John, Susie, Luke, Matt and me). It is up in the Mountain Village of Telluride. It's your typical log plus river stone construction, and it has two bedrooms and three baths on the first floor, along with living, dining, and kitchen, and the master and a loft is upstairs. The ceilings everywhere on the first floor are just as high as the second floor ceilings, so it is very airy. And we have a nice little backyard with a hot tub.

We went on a nice hike today. :) The weather is so awesome...I was talking to Mom and it was102 in Dallas, while it was sprinkling and maybe 60 here. Yay!