Visiting friends near Telluride Colorado!

We spent 3 days at this gorgeous home of our friends, Joanna and John. We met them sailing in Florida and cruised the Bahamas with them last winter. They have a beautiful Hans Christian named Kachina. When we were cruising together, they encouraged us to visit them this summer in Colorado, so we did! Their home is near Telluride - what a great location!  

This is what some of the countryside looks like near Joanna and John's place. I think Lots of beautiful aspen forests and meadows and mountains.

This is their kitchen - a real kitchen to cook in instead of just a 2-burner camp stove! We had a lovely time making breakfasts and dinners together and chatting over coffee or wine on the terraces outside.

We had a cosy, charming room under the eves - John and Joanna built this home (and much of its stunningly beautiful furniture). It's so welcoming and peaceful that it's hard to leave it to go explore the surrounding sights.

But explore we did...Telluride is a very special village tucked into a box canyon. It's a fun place, and spectacularly situated in the mountains with a gondola that takes you even higher up and plenty of shops, restaurants and other things to see and do. It seems to be a very successful 4-season village with a vibrant population- lots of kids and people of all ages around. Beautiful homes, great architecture, interesting history. We had a wonderful time there with Joanna and John - superb guides!! 

A little river runs alongside the village and kids and adults have fun tubing and fishing there. 

One day we hiked up to a waterfall. What you're seeing here is snow, which we passed along the way.  I think we hiked less than 4 miles, but at the highest elevation we've been at so far, I got pretty winded! I was walking with Joanna and she was kind enough to do mot of the talking! I've had more trouble than Jim getting used to the high elevations here (like over 9,000 feet).  I'm going to post this while I can (we're now at Mesa Verde in the campground with wifi) and post the rest asap, with more photos from the hike and Telluride.