Telluride CO

We made Telluride, CO today. Cameron flies out tomorrow, going back to his summer internship program. Connor flies in tomorrow,and he and I will continue back east on the 28th from Telluride. We have about 1,000 miles down and 2,500 miles to go. Telluride is an amazingly beautiful mountain town, and today is the mountain film festival, which makes it especially fun to be here. Despite fleeing across the state of Utah the wind continues to dog us and makes biking that much more of a fight. We have met a number of interesting people on the trip so far. Those that stand out include a German couple, Winifred and Gottfried, who are from Wiesbaden Germany. They started in Orlando Florida, and we're heading trough Phoenix to San Francisco. They were using bikes with small electric motors that allowed them a little help on he it mountains, the small addition certainly made all the difference when pedaling up the mountains. We wished we had those on a few of the summits! We also met a guy who was from Australia. He had come from the desert on the same route as the Germans and was covered in heat blisters. That gave us extra motivation to make sure we did not end up the same way going through the desert, after liberally applying sunblock we continued on our way. Then, most interestingly was the guy who was riding his horse, from San Francisco, going to New York accompanied by his dog. He was riding in honor of his parents, both of whom had died from cancer. A few days outside of Baker Utah his horse got attacked by a mountain lion, the horse bucked him and he was left with a few broken ribs. As he limped his way in Baker his dog was then bit by a snake just utside of town. After coming in on skin and bones, they slowly nursed him, his horse and his dog back to health in Baker Utah. He got into town a few weeks before us and purportedly has continued his trip across America. The stories we have heard reaffirmed our decision to stick to the roads and travel on bikes, fortunately we have yet to encounter anything as severely hazardous as a mountain lion or snake on our travels.