Westward Bound: The First Few Days

As of Saturday afternoon, I am officially out of town.  The schedule this week looks a little something like this: fly into Las Vegas, spend two days there on business, drive to Telluride to meet some of my family members and spend three days there, drive to Moab, spend two days there, and then wend our way home.  Great plan, no?

I'm actually going to skip Las Vegas for now; I'll devote a blog post to that later.  (I have a few thoughts that will take more time to verbalize than I have at the moment.)  For now, we'll stick with the abridged version, which states that I arrived in Telluride last night around 2 AM after a morning spent in meetings followed by a 10-hour drive.  Yes, long day, indeed.

It was worth it all this morning, though, when I awoke at 6:22 AM to the sight of two small faces peering at me, one from each side of the bed.  Oh, it was early all right, but curling up with two precious little people and getting to hear all about their adventures over the last few days was heaven on earth.  I think I actually managed to catch another couple of winks in there, but it wasn't long before the general hum of activity in the house required that I rouse and join it.  In all of my solitary (ish) ramblings over the last year or two, I'd kind of forgotten about the logistics of moving a larger group of people from place to place.  A certain amount of patience and overall mellowness stands a person in very good stead.  (It also helps to really love the people you're with.)  

After much ado, we were finally loaded up and off to breakfast.  Now, being I arrived in the dead of night (having dodged various deer, elk, rats, porcupines, marmots, and bunnies on the road, and having failed to dodge two police officers, ugh), I had absolutely no idea what type of surroundings I had driven into.  (I will say that those last few miles gave me a definite sense of being surrounded by cliffs and sharp, plunging drop-offs, a sense that later proved to be correct.)  It turns out that I had driven into a little U-shaped bowl of a valley, completely surrounded by majestic, snow-capped peaks.  I've never seen the Alps in real life, but this is what I picture.  

Ash has been raving about Baked in Telluride since she was here last year, so, of course, we had to eat there.  My salt bagel with butter was really delicious but gosh, it was salty!  And I had to have chocolate milk to match Annistyn..

Check out the size of those donuts!

After loading up with more water and victuals and dropping my car off with the lady vacuuming a car at the Hertz shed out behind the Telluride airport (small town, folks), we took the jeeps we had rented out for some off-roading.  I don't know if this is something that is hard-wired into the DNA of the male species in general or if it's unique to the males of my family, but something about driving a vehicle with four-wheel-drive into impossibly tight situations replete with mud, snow, fallen trees, creeks, and four-foot-wide roads next to two-mile-deep sheer drop-offs (I am exaggerating only slightly) makes these fellas come ALIVE.  To be honest, it is a lot of fun, except for when they decide to turn around on afore-mentioned four-foot-wide roads next to two-mile-deep sheer drop-offs, at which point I sit in the back seat, gasp for oxygen and try not to audibly express my complete and utter terror.  

The view was so beautiful, though.  And, just as a side note, if a person ever wants to bring an entirely new level of joy and discovery to an experience, bring a seven and four-year-old along.  Seeing the world through their eyes adds an entirely new layer of life and color to everything we do.

We stopped for lunch next to a little brook.  It was so much fun to be able to just relax a bit.  Colton and Isaiah explored a little cave, Annistyn and I tossed some pebbles into the creek, Grandpa built a dam, Colton practiced his slingshot and bow and arrows.  At one point, listening to the stillness, I thought to myself about what a rarity such quiet is in our modern-day world.  Noise and chaos is everywhere, and yet, if you think about it, the world God created in the beginning was one of peace.  I have several friends who often tell me about their inability to focus, their short attention spans.  I thought of them today, contrasted the worlds they live in, with all of their devices and appointments and running here and there, with this hushed and tranquil landscape, and wondered...  How could a short attention span survive here?  What would happen if we were to lose all of the commotion that seems so easily to create a barrier between us and our Maker?  And what must the Lord think of the gulf we've created between how we live and how he created us to live?  One of those things that pass through one's thoughts when one can finally slow down and hear oneself think...

I will confess that, by now, my lack of sleep was starting to catch up with me, but even though I was seeing everything through a haze of exhaustion, I could still absorb that I was in some beautiful country.

We even spotted a beaver dam...

And I could still wonder how the heck those miners got up there...

I did get a nice, long nap in once we got back, which made dinner so much more enjoyable (and probably made me much better company).  We ate at Rustico Restaurante in downtown Telluride.  I will tell you that I have longed for the opportunity to eat truly great Italian food for a very long time, and I have had a very difficult time finding it.  It seems like everybody and their mother claims to serve the best-a spaghetti-a, and to be blunt, nobody ever, ever does.  Tonight, my luck finally changed.  I finally got to experience a taste of Italy, the way I always imagined it.  Adorable, heavily-accented waitstaff with just the sort of manners one would expect to find in the mother country (what is it about real Italian gentlemen, anyway?), the pretty little girl turning cartwheels outside the plate glass windows, and, best of all, a plate of spaghetti capable of inspiring passion.  Simple and light, spaghetti al salta, just tomatoes, garlic, basil and some good olive oil, but the stuff of dreams.  I wouldn't have wanted to doze through it, let's put it that way.  

My American little self got all happy with the lighting and the green glass and bare tables and all...  I can be so easy to impress...

Polenta with mushrooms and Fontina 

Very likely some of the best pizza I've eaten.  The crust was wonderfully blistered and full of flavor.

The spaghetti.  I feel an emotional bond with this spaghetti.

An expert noodle-slurper, right there.

Now that I'm actually awake, I'm starting to pick up on the whole Telluride vibe, and I'm liking it, quite a lot.  An awful lot of bicycles, artists, flowing dresses and vehicles with Thule racks on them...  I imagine I may be elaborating on this a bit more over the next couple of days, but things are looking very, very promising. (As my more conservative friends groan...)

And with that, I leave you, for now.  Until tomorrow, a good night to all.