Lauren comes to town

It has been over a month now since I left Alabama to drive here. With that being said, I have not seen my friends in a very long time. Luckily I live with my brother so I don't get home sick. This past week I had the pleasure of hosting my good friend Lauren in Colorado. She was my first visitor and the friend time was much needed! I took her just about everywhere I knew. (Ouray, Ridgway, Montrose, Telluride, Silverton & Grand Junction) FIVE straight days of hiking and one of those days included paddle boarding.

 This is the view of Telluride from on top of the mountain.

 Took Lauren on her first Gondola ride to show her Mountain Village.

We went to the Black Canyon National Park. The history behind this park is simply amazing and so interesting. Pictures just can't do it justice.

 This was called the "Painted Wall"

 To get to the Gunnison river you had to drive down a 16% grade (aka hold down your brakes for a couple of miles) My poor Avalon is not used to that kind of driving and once we finally made it down my left brakes were smoking. Lauren and I had absolutely no idea what was happening or what to do about it. Luckily we ran into some very nice locals who informed us of what was smoking and what to do about it. We were able to let my car cool down while we took a walk down the river and a short nap on the nearby benches.

For my brothers birthday we rented paddle boards and drove an hour up the mountain to Silver Jack Reservoir. It was in the lower 70s so bathing suits were not an option, not to mention the water was FREEZING. This gave us A LOT of motivation to not fall in. We weren't able to get a picture of all three of us on the water or much of the views we saw on the boards. (Taking my camera out on a paddle board would have been a very dumb decision.) The ride down the reservoir was very beautiful and I was kicking myself for not owning a GoPro at the time. We paddled all the way to the other end of the reservoir, which took over an hour to do. Luckily no one fell in and we were not as sore as we thought we were going to be the next day.

I took Lauren to one of my favorite hikes in Silverton. We ended up going off trail and climbing up a dried up waterfall. You can slightly see the path behind Lauren in this first picture. We got very high up, just enough to give us a little scare coming back down. It was very steep but worth the view we got in the end.

 Lauren and I started picking all the different wild flowers we could find on our hike.


On our drive back home we came across an old mine that still had the old mine shacks where the miners lived.