Loop tour ~ Canyons, Telluride, & a bear!

We did a loop tour today of about 275 miles and saw lots of great stuff!  The scenery around here keeps changing.....there will be really flat land, then buttes and mesas, then canyons, then mountains!  Some of the rocks and buttes are red and some are brown.  There will be sagebrush flats that drop down into rivers lined with cottonwood trees.  Then, there are the light green swatches of aspens.  We would be driving on flat land, and go around a curve, and ahead would be a road winding down into a canyon.  Or we'd drive between two buttes, and have entirely different landscape and colors on the other side.

We drove from Montrose north on route 50 through a few towns, and then south on route 141, which goes through the Uncompahgre National Forest.  (Try pronouncing that one!)  We went through Gateway, which has red buttes similar to Monument Valley, and a very exclusive resort.  

At Placerville, we took the road into Telluride.  It has lots of quaint little houses and lots of huge ones.  As we were coming back down to our loop road, I saw a black bear just starting to cross the road ahead.  I hit the brakes and grabbed my camera and got two photos of him.  He had been in the river just beside the road, and scrambled up the bank on the other side and disappeared into a hole beside a rock.  I don't think the four cars behind me minded the interruption!  

We then went through Ridgeway and stopped at their visitor center.  We'll head that way again during the next two days as we go on another day trip. 

Great sky!

Bugs on a wildflower

Buttes go from brown to red

Different layers of rock....
some won't grow vegetation.

Cottonwoods ready to scatter

We don't know what causes the pale green in some rocks.
It's not vegetation.

Hanging flume......
The remains of a 7-mile flume built during the 1880's for hydraulic gold mining.

If you look closely on the right wall of the canyon,
you can see the remains of the flume
and how high it is on the canyon wall.

Coming into Telluride

Main street in Telluride

I guess lots of people want to be there
but can't afford or find a place to sleep!

Colorful houses!

Bridal veil falls at the end of the
road into Telluride

Elk grazing outside Telluride

Bear scrambling away!

View of mountains beyond Ridgeway

Looking down on Ridgeway