Montrose, Colorado

February 15-28, 2025

After an unacceptable almost one month absence, we found ourselves in Colorado once more.

Brandy decided to deviate from her normal request and take a trip to Montrose for her birthday this year, instead of Crested Butte. The city’s close proximity to Ouray and Telluride gave us new opportunities abound.

I got a late start packing and loading but we still got on the road Friday morning. After driving through a bit of snow, we stopped at a Quality Inn in Ogallala, Nebraska. It was anything but Quality. The room stunk of cigarette smoke and there were odd stains on the upholstery of the chair and drapes. We headed out Saturday morning, stopping in Aurora, Colorado to pick up tire chains that might have been needed getting over any of the passes leading to our destination.

Puckered Butts

The second leg of the drive on Saturday was a tad more treacherous than the smooth sailing we experienced on Friday.

The weather turned as we dove deeper into Colorado and finally, as we started the climb up and into Monarch Pass, the roads slowly became snowy and eventually icy. We crept through the clouds in 4 wheel drive , then after we crested the peak, I put the automatic transmission in 2nd gear and crawled down the mountain, chains not needed. We finally got comfortable enough to put it back into Drive and soon after, putting it back into 2WD.

We cruised on like this for a while longer, eventually finding our way to Gunnison with no major problems. We made a stop at The Dispensary and bought as much of our sleep gummies that we are able to buy in one day then continued on our way the last hour or so to Montrose.

Arrival

We got to our AirBnB almost exactly at our allowed check-in time of 4:00. We found ourselves in a well-appointed condo, sharing a wall with another unit. It was a cute little 2 bedroom, one bath unit with a small but adequate kitchen and a sizeable fenced in back yard giving Ash plenty of room to run around should he choose to.

We unloaded the truck and I got Brandy’s office set up before we headed out to the grocery store (yes, I said we headed out to the grocery store.) It was a different challenge having Brandy helping me shop. In fact, by the end, her insistence on leaving caused us to miss several items from the list I’d written up.

We returned to our temporary home, unloaded and ordered barbecue through Door Dash. It was delivered and we ate while we watched a little TV in the living room. I made note that the TV was very dark across the top third or so of the screen. We made do and watched a little more, finished up our dinner and almost immediately went to bed.

Ouray

After waking up entirely too early on Sunday morning, I made myself some coffee then headed to a nearby Valvoline Instant Oil Change then ran the truck through a nearby car wash; it was disgustingly filthy from the snow and road grit we’d picked up on the 1,100 mile drive… and the 1,800 miles we’d driven from home to Cripple Creek and back.

Once back at the AirBnB, I took Ash for a quick walk around the block then Brandy and I headed to Ouray.

We left and headed down highway 50 toward the Switzerland of America. We did duck in and shop at a few of the shops that were open, then we went to Maggie’s Kitchen for lunch. I went up to the counter and ordered a mushroom Swiss burger for Brandy and a green chile cheeseburger for myself.

The food was pushed out the window to us and the burgers were served plain. All condiments and toppings were on a counter right inside the front door. I piled up our desired condiments and sat down to eat.

The burger was actually pretty good, though the quality of the green chile left a bit to be desired. I mean, what do you expect, it’s Colorado green chile.

After lunch, we left with intentions to stop in Ridgway where Brandy wanted to visit a thrift shop and another dispensary to get even more of our sleep products. As we pulled into the tiny town though, Brandy began complaining of stomach pains and that she wanted to go back home so she could use the bathroom. We headed back to the AirBnB in short order.

Telluride and the Ridgway Redo

Monday morning, I woke up after a restful 8 hours of sleep feeling a million times better than I did when I went to bed. Much of the body aches were gone and I felt like I could take on the world.

I showered, made some coffee and, when Brandy woke up, made her some as well. Once she was settled in to her waking up routine, I took Ash for another walk then, once Brandy was ready to go, we started our trip to Telluride… on a holiday (Presidents’ Day). The narrow roads were choked with parked cars, but we were able to find a spot on the main drag through town.

The town is pretty much completely surrounded by majestic peaks that, at the time of our visit, were capped in snow. The main road is lined with historic buildings and, in mid-February, had a 6 foot tall island of snow that had been scraped from the roads and was awaiting disposal. The street was clogged with heavy machinery, large excavators pushing the snow into the middle of the road, their tall tires wrapped in chains. They were busy moving massive piles of the white powder then dumping it into large dump trucks waiting to move the snow to another location.

We saw people gliding down the face of the nearby mountain on skis and boards.

We made our way to the target destination for Brandy, a thrift shop run by the Second Chance Humane Society. We browsed around for a bit and, as we were getting ready to check out, I got the call that my grandma had died the night before. She had been declining for years and was not living a very fruitful life leading up to her passing. She was confused, bedridden, really had no quality of life. At the risk of sounding quite inhumane (ironic, considering where we were at the time,) I was relieved that she had moved on. Now, whatever afterlife she believed in could be enjoyed in comfort and peace. I will make a post about my time with her and my grandpa later.

Anyway, we checked out of the thrift shop and headed up Colorado Street, stopping in at many of the various mercantile and textile stores we happened upon. We wound up picking up our usual cache of goodies- magnets, stickers, shot glasses, et cetera. After we’d walked up then back down the street, we stopped in for lunch at Brown Dog Pizza.

We were seated upstairs where the low ceiling made me walk with my head cocked to one side. I ordered a small Detroit style pizza that goes by the name of Southwestern BBQ Chicken:

Spicy BBQ Sauce / Signature Pizza Sauce / Mozzarella / Red Onions / Grilled Chicken / Applewood Smoked Bacon / Roasted Corn / Chopped Cilantro

Brown Dog Pizza menu

It was pretty good, but even one fourth of the pizza, which was one paltry slice, was enough for me. I took the rest back to the AirBnB where I had the leftovers the next night for dinner.

In the meantime, we’d done all we wanted to do so we left the area and headed to Ridgway.

In Ridgway was another thrift store that Brandy wanted to stop at, so we did. After Brandy had picked out her funky little item, we left there and went to another dispensary and picked up a lot more marijuana-based products. Once satisfied with our haul, we headed back home and chilled out the rest of the night.

Working Through the Week

The rest of our first week in Montrose was spent like many of the weeks we spend traveling: we worked. Having Monday off for the holiday meant that I had to work Friday but I did the bare minimum possible before logging out early for the weekend.

I took a gummy and got nice and high while Brandy and I waited for Christy to come visit us. She showed up to the AirBnB at about 9:30, after which we sat and chit-chatted for a bit before quickly calling it a night.

Crested Butte and the Return to Telluride

Christy in tow, we headed out early-ish to head in to Crested Butte. With an over hour long drive ahead of us, we made a detour to Coffee Trader for a light breakfast and a coffee to go. I wound up with a blueberry scone and a Mexican Latte:

A cafe mocha made with spiced Mexican chocolate

Coffee Trader drink menu

The scone was great, nice and tender with a crispy skirt surrounding it. The latte, on the other hand… if I could find the specific recipe for this drink, I would go out of my way to make that my daily morning drink. It was absolutely phenomenal. I savored it all the way in to Gunnison before it ran out, at which point, I made mention of how sad I was that it was gone.

We pulled in to Crested Butte a little after 11:00 and made our way directly to Secret Stash. After lunch, we browsed up and down Elk Street some more, hitting all the familiar haunts, then we made our way back to Clyde. We drove around the corner to the Dispensary where we kept on stocking up our supply, then we headed back down the highway back in to Gunnison. We stopped at Six Points Thrift Store, then we made our way a little further down Main Street into downtown Gunnison. We parked Clyde on the street and headed into the first of several stores on this leg of our journey.

By the time we were done and back on our way to Montrose, we had stopped at a bakery where we filled up on carbs and more coffee, and four or five different thrift and consignment stores, including one that had a huge fire-red leather bag that caught Brandy’s eye ($600 later, and we walked out of the store with it… Happy Birthday Brandy!)

By the time we made it back to the AirBnB, we were all tuckered out. We had done a lot of walking, at elevation, no less, and we were all pretty achy. I cooked up a steak, some veggies and potatoes for the three of us, we ate, and before you knew it, we were all in bed fast asleep.

Sunday, we got up and headed out to Bluecorn Cafe & Mercantile. Bluecorn is a local candle manufacturer that hosts a mercantile and simple cafe at their factory in Montrose, just around the corner from the AirBnB.

We stopped in and sampled all of the scented candles they had to offer then, after Brandy had perused the clearance rack, we made our purchases and headed to the cafe side where I ordered the quiche and a cafe mocha and Brandy ordered avocado toast with a poached egg.

When I was called to pick up my mocha, I was thrilled to see the elusive foam design drizzled into the hot coffee drink. In the years I’ve been drinking coffee, this is the first time I’d ever been presented with a design on top of it. To make things better, it was pretty tasty, too.

The quiche was pretty damned good too. I finished it in a hurry, then polished off the uneaten portion of Brandy’s breakfast. We then gathered up our purchases and headed back to Telluride.

During the entire drive, Christy marveled aloud at the astonishing beauty of the scenery we passed through. Indeed, it was a wonderful drive. After a week of warmer temperatures, much of the snow we’d seen on our previous drive down had melted away, leaving a terrific contrast of desert-like landscape in the areas that saw plenty of warm sun, and the stark coldness of the snow where the terrain remained in perpetual shadow.

After a couple of stops for photos, we found ourselves on Colorado Street, cutting through historic downtown Telluride. The tall islands of plowed snow were entirely gone, the only evidence remaining was an occasional puddle where a missed hunk of snow was left to melt.

Brandy and Christy shopped wonderfully, I was so happy to see them engaging like they did and was happy to step aside the best I could and let them.

We soon found ourselves at Steamie’s Burger Bar for lunch. Brandy got a plain burger with ketchup and onions, and I got the Big Kahuna Burger, which had slices of fried pineapple. I got onion rings for Brandy and I to share, and Christy and I split a pitcher of beer.

As we waited for our food, I noticed they had a sauce bar with all kinds of sauces available to pump out. There were your standard options like ketchup and mustard, then they got weird- bacon mustard, blueberry ketchup and chipotle aioli, to name a few.

The food came and was pretty good. After we’d polished off the last of the beer in the pitcher, we continued shopping then headed out toward the AirBnB.

On our way out of Telluride, we stopped at a general store in the best-named city we’ve come across on our travels: Sawpit. We ran in, picked up some road snacks, used the loo, then got back on the road, driving through downtown Ridgway on our way back to the AirBnB.

We hauled in our second day’s booty and Christy quickly packed up and headed out for her 5 hour drive home.

Meanwhile, I took a gummy, watched some Supernatural and worked on this blog before heading to bed for the night.

Happy Birthday Brandy!

After a standard work day Monday, I took 15 mg of THC products and was pretty much done for the night.

We woke up the next morning, both of us looking forward to a day off together (yes, Brandy committed to taking a day off. I am SO proud of her!)

Our first stop was Main Street Massage, a massage parlor on… well, on Main Street in Montrose. Mere minutes from the AirBnB, we arrived just before our appointed time of 10:00. We went in, filled out the requisite paperwork and were escorted into a couples room where we were both treated to a 90 minute massage, Brandy’s included cupping.

After our massage, we headed back to the house to let Ash out, Brandy changed, and while she was using the restroom, I took Ash for a quick walk.

We headed out and hit three thrift stores in Montrose. There was a fourth one she originally said she’d wanted to visit but she was quickly running out of gas. We bypassed the fourth thrift store and headed up to Ridgway State Park where we’d planned on taking a short hike.

We went to the visitor’s center where I purchased a couple of stickers, a magnet, and a day pass then we walked around the building and down to a scenic overlook that looks over the Ridgway Reservoir and to the San Juan Mountains in the distance.

After we’d taken some pictures, we continued on to the trail we were originally there to hike, Wapiti Trail. AllTrails has this trail listed as an easy 1.1 mile out and back hike with 141 feet of elevation gain. We made it maybe a quarter of a mile before Brandy decided to call it quits. We turned around and headed back to the truck and made our way to The Stone House, a steakhouse in Montrose, for her birthday. After eating, we quickly returned to the AirBnB, took some gummies, started laundry and spent the rest of the night relaxing.

The rest of the week, which really wasn’t much at all, was working Wednesday and Thursday, and getting ready to leave (packing, cleaning, loading the truck, etc.)

Friday morning, we did our last-minute cleaning up and hit the road at 8:00. We detoured through Canon City and Colorado Springs, taking the Kansas route, stopping in Oakley, Kansas, and finally making it back home that Saturday afternoon after two uneventful days of driving.

Conclusion

We’d started the trip off on a rocky foot, getting into an argument a day after our arrival, but we quickly patched it up and it turned into one of the better trips to Colorado we’ve taken. LOTS of retail therapy, seeing Brandy and Christy hanging out happily, and having some new experiences in Ouray and Telluride made it one to remember.

As always, pictures are up on the Photo Diary.

As for what’s next, I am going to California for my grandma’s service in early April, then headed to a conference in Verona, Wisconsin, at the end of April. [edit: before I even got around to posting this, both of those trips have been canceled. –P] Brandy is planning on a work trip right around the same time but nothing more is planned until a trip to southern Utah and Albuquerque in September, then Mexico in October. I’m sure we will go do more between now and then but that’s all that’s planned for now.

Stay tuned!

-Phil

PS – hey, look at that, I made this post under three thousand words!

-P