The Chambers

Telluride has got to be one of the most beautiful places in the world. It just has to be! Set in a box canyon at the bottom of two rather large mountains this small town is a beautiful place to stop and spend time. In fact, by the end of the week we were wishing we could stay longer (though the warmth of Hawaii did beckon loudly)!

We had such a great time in Telluride. We were joined by friends, Kim and Ian from Boston, for a week which included my birthday and Christmas. A white Christmas! We enjoyed our week there so much and thank Kimmy and Ian for coming over to spend the week with us. Jackson loves hanging out with them and likes to joke with Ian about how silly he is.

What did we get up too? Well, the pace was not equal to the frenetic pace of our time in New York nor was it as relaxing as our time on the cruise. It was a week of fun in the snow, with a dose of good company, food and skiing thrown in.

To get there we had to get up and leave Disney World nice and early (5am) and fly from Orlando to Denver before transferring to a smaller flight into Montrose and then taking an hour and a half car ride to Telluride. It ended up being a day of about 14 hours of travelling…. Unfortunately it was dark by the time we got into the car, so we missed out on the “spectacularness” of the scenery on the drive, though this meant we woke up the next morning having never seen the beautiful views and surrounding area of Telluride and we got a lovely surprise of magnificent scenery from the place we were staying when we woke up the next morning.

We hired a “condo” for the week, which had three bedrooms set over a couple of “floors”. Jackson was very proud to have the best room in the house, which was a loft like room. The condo was in a great location, right near the “Galloping Goose” bus stop (PUBLIC TRANSPORT!) which is a free bus which does loops of the town area. The condo was also in very easy striking distance of the main street, restaurants, the grocery store and the gondola / ski lifts.

Skiing-wise, Kylie and I had bought a cross trainer a couple of months ago to help us get into shape. The thing is hated by us both and received little use in the development of the athletic specimens we are . Though I am sure both Kylie and I have every intention of using it through 2009 to get fit and ready for the next time we go skiing and the spiders who’ve made their home webs there will be very mad to get kicked off.

We didn’t let our poor fitness levels get in the way of some good skiing. The skiing was great, with Telluride offering a good range of runs for the varied skiing capability we have. Ian looked resplendent in his 1980’s Navy Blue one-piece ski suit and took a couple runs down black rated (harder) slopes, which he managed spectacularly, even managing to put a call in to us from his mobile phone in the condo as he started the run and half way down the slope so we could sit in the condo and watch him. True story! Kimmy mastered the beginners run, while I (Chris) got reasonably comfortable on the easier runs and even managed to work up to a few runs down the blue (intermediate) slopes, while Kylie managed a view runs down the beginner run.

Jackson didn’t enjoy the kids ski school too much unfortunately. We’d heard really great things about the ski school, but it seemed as though they were still working their way through some early in the season bugs and were a little disorganised. We had organised a lesson for us and left Jackson at the kids ski school, I think next time we’ll bring him along to the lesson and Kylie and he can learn and then we’ll meet up after the lesson and ski together.

Christmas day was a real hoot! Even though we have grown up with hot Christmas days, there was something very natural about being in a cold environment for Christmas.

We’d had organised for a Christmas tree to be in the condo and convinced Jackson that Santa would leave him a present or two under the tree for when he woke up Christmas Day. We convinced him by telling Jackson that Santa has a really big Google map with the Christmas Eve location of every kid in the world on it. The kids location is even marked with an information box for each kid with vital information about that child, including age, favourite toys, Christmas gift requests and of course the information box is coloured green or red to let Santa know if that child has been naughty or nice. Classic.

Jackson woke at a reasonable hour and came to tell us it was time to get up and open presents. We went downstairs and sure enough Santa had found Jackson in Telluride and left a bounty of good presents for him.

After the present session we made a snowman, complete with chocolate eyes and a carrot nose! A pretty good snowman apparently as the next day we saw a family stop to get their photo taken with him. Christmas lunch was a traditional Americano affair (burgers and chips) and then we had a rest in the condo before dinner.

Kylie managed to sneak in some shopping (of course).

Kim and Ian shouted me to a beautiful birthday dinner (thanks again team). I had a shrimp and calamari appetizer which had a few slices of deep fried lemon and lime – delicious! My desert even got served up with a candle…. Cosmopolitan is a nice restaurant if you’re ever in Telluride.

There was a lot of snow while we were there. The previous December snowfall record was 93 inches of snow, which was last year. This December they’ve already had 100 inches by the 26th! There was lots of lovely powdery snow for us to enjoy skiing on. Just in the week we were there they had a lot of snow, including a pretty bad blizzard.

On our last morning it was minus 9 degrees fahrenheit, which is about minus 20 degrees celsius! Yep, minus 20 celsius….

I hope the photos we have do the beauty of this place justice. Lots more photos to come

We’re now in Hawaii and have met up up with Kylie’s mum and dad for a week before flying home. It’s nice to thaw out and see more white powder (on a beach this time!).

Hope all’s well at home,

Chris, Kylie and Jacko