Telluride, Colorado—September 19, 2024

This morning we drove from Moab, Utah to Telluride, Colorado, where we are spending the night at the New Sheridan Hotel.  The New Sheridan was built in 1885 and is on West Colorado Avenue, the main street that runs through the center of town. As usual, parking Vanna in a small mountain town for an overnight stay was a true joy.  Luckily, Telluride has an overnight permitting system, unlike Whitefish and Jackson, Wyoming, where there are signs every six feet that say, “No Overnight Parking, You Big Fat Losers!” In case you are wondering, we stay in Vanna about half the time and in a hotel the other half.  We like to stay in the center of towns where we can walk to shops and restaurants. Camping is fun, but one can enjoy only so much nature on one’s trip.

Yesterday on our last day in Moab we drove to the Needles area entrance of the Canyonlands National Park.  Canyonlands includes a colorful landscape of canyons, mesas and buttes by the Colorado and Green Rivers.  There are two paved entrances to the park—Island in the Sky (where we were two days ago on the Shafer four wheel drive trail) and Needles.  What we saw the day before on the Shafer Trail was so spectacular that Needles seemed kind of ho-hum.  All in your perspective, I suppose.  Also, the entire area around Moab is stunning, so the park is just more of the same landscape.  

We did stop on the way to the park at Newspaper Rock State Historic Monument, which is a rock panel carved with one of the largest known collections of petroglyphs.  The 200-square-foot rock site is a part of the cliffs all along the upper end of Indian Creek Canyon, and features examples of drawings from a variety of cultures, including the Fremont, Anasazi, Navajo, and other ancestral Puebloan peoples. Petroglyphs are rock carvings (rock paintings are called pictographs) made by pecking directly on the rock surface using a stone chisel and a hammerstone.  Some petroglyphs seem to depict real events, while others appear to be abstract.  Notice in the enlarged picture that the hunter on the horse used a bow and arrow to shoot the deer right in the buttocks.

And finally, in 2021 we were in Telluride after driving in a jeep over Imogene Pass, a much scarier situation than our four wheel drive trip a couple of days ago. Imogene Pass is one way to get here, but definitely not what I would suggest. The jeep in the last picture was high-centered on a big rock and had to be towed out backwards. Scariest thing I have ever seen.