Didn't go to Telluride after all

We were going to Telluride, but ended up bypassing it.  Although it is a pretty cool town, we aren't big fans, too hoity-toity for us, and we've been there a bunch over the years.  Instead we saw a road into the ghost town of Alta and Alta Lakes.  It is several miles south of Telluride at 11,800'.  The town was active from about 1877 until 1946-1947.  It had the distinction of being the first mine to use AC current.  George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla helped make it possible.  It was a cool drive up off the main highway, but not too much remains of the town anymore.  The ruins of the mine area and the boarding house and just a few others.

Mine ruins

Boarding house on left

In amongst the ruins, we saw two overseers of the manor:)

We had lunch perched up with an incredible view only blocked by all the rain in the area.

Lunch view between the raindrops

The little road continues up to Alta Lakes, an absolutely pristine spot scattered with campsites.  The water as you can see in the pictures is so clear, it's like it's not even there!

We even did a quick Jeep commercial while we were there!  Can you hear us Jeep?

We tried to take another road back out into the back of Telluride's ski resort, but unfortunately we ended up at a locked gate.  So back around we went towards Telluride and up beside the airport and onto a road called Last Dollar Road.  The airport is perched at about 9000' with an absolute straight down drop off at the eastern end of the runway.  For those of you that fly, this would be quite a spot to land and take off from.  High terrain in all quadrants, and I'm sure very interesting wind and weather to contend with. Let me at it, oh yeah, I retired.  In the next picture I tried to show the end of the runway from far away and above, but it is pretty cloudy.

Runway in the distance

This road climbs high up above Telluride with views that are priceless, and I'm sure property values to match!  Some pretty nice places to say the least.

Nice digs!

What a view!

Some of these houses are perched out over cliffs, it makes you wonder how they were built.  Well, we got a good idea from this.

Building away

And a little perspective of where it is situated.  And the view from our coffee break spot!

The road got narrower and went up and over a pass.  It wound around and went through a beautiful Aspen grove.

We worked our way back to Montrose.  We're anxious to get moving again, but we are sure going to miss Colorado!