After several days of rain, we happily welcome blue skies and sunshine. It is a great day for a drive and we head north up 135 to the town of Crested Butte, an old mining village with loads of charm. The small single street downtown is lined with colorful Victorian style buildings with numerous organic grocery and coffee houses. Mount Crested Butte looms over the town which sits at the end of a long valley surrounded by a designated wilderness area. The Elk Mountain Range stretches north to Aspen and south to the Black Canyon and the 16 mile Kebler Pass runs through this range. This is our destination for the day, a foliage seeker’s heaven. The dirt road takes us through vistas of multicolored ranges, and the world’s largest single grove of Aspens, which stretch for miles and miles, in various stages of color – so many aspens that we are overwhelmed by the beauty of the season. The end of the drive is a wide vista of the Colorado range and we are astounded at the expanse of wilderness that has not sign of development or human occupation.
We end the day with local homemade ice cream at The Third Scoop in downtown Crested Butte.
We discover that internet can be accessed, just not from the cabin, so sitting in our car by the lodge office, we connect to civilization.
