Tag: photography

There’s Something about Telluride

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Charming mountain towns are practically the norm in Colorado, but, to me, Telluride somehow seems a cut above the rest. Tucked into a narrow valley with glorious mountain views on all sides, Telluride was established in 1878 and is full of historic buildings, attractive houses, hip restaurants and cozy cafes. With local street fairs celebrating anything and everything, weekly farmer’s markets and major international music and film festivals, you’ll find the atmosphere in Telluride hard to beat.

This is southwest Colorado, so it goes without saying that Telluride is an outdoor paradise. In addition to offering world-class skiing in winter, there are oodles of hiking trails—many leading right from town—to keep the outdoor enthusiast occupied all summer long. And for wildlife lovers, there’s even a herd of resident elk and a pond right in the middle of town with an active beaver lodge. How cool is that? Like I said, there’s just something about Telluride.

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Backpacking Colorado’s Four Pass Loop

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Maroon Bells

This four-day, four-pass backpacking trip is often featured on lists of the world’s classic hikes, and it certainly is worthy of all the hype. Beginning at Aspen’s magnificent Maroon Bells and traversing four 12,000+ passes over its 26 miles, the hike offers magnificent scenery and a good physical challenge. You might think that starting at the Maroon Bells—one of Colorado’s most photogenic peaks—would make the the remainder of the hike somewhat anti-climatic, but each pass offers a new set of vistas that are just as spectacular as the next. The Four Pass Loop is awesome from beginning to end. We highly recommend it! (more…)

A Tent with a View: Backpacking to Colorado’s Blue Lake

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Above Blue Lake

We were compelled to do the Blue Lake hike outside of the southwest Colorado town of Ouray after seeing a Backpacker Magazine article touting it as having “one of America’s best secret campsites.” Blue Lake also happens to be located just below 14,150-foot Mt. Sneffels, which is named after the Snaefellsnes peak in Iceland. At the time, we had just returned from six weeks in Iceland, and we couldn’t resist the opportunity to do this particular hike based on that fact alone. What can I say? I guess we’re suckers when it comes to travel nostalgia… (more…)

Hiking Colorado’s Ice Lake

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On the Trail to Ice Lake

Have we ever mentioned how much we love Colorado? In the summer of 2012, Matt and I attended a college friend’s wedding in Denver and then went hiking and backpacking for two weeks. Last summer, I returned for my annual end of summer trip with my mother (sadly Matt was already back at work in Chicago and green with envy). My mother and I stayed just outside of Telluride, and, even though I only had a few days to explore the area, I was ready to convince Matt that we needed to sell the house in Chicago and move out there. As teachers, I am pretty positive that we wouldn’t be able to afford a house— much less a shoebox in Telluride—but we’re so smitten with Colorado that we might just be willing to live in a tent to make it happen. Ahh, another dream of moving out west… (more…)

The Boundary Waters: Exploring Ely, MN

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Ely is a tiny town in Northern Minnesota that is perhaps best known to fans of the Boundary Waters as the gateway to canoe country. Pronounced EE-lee, this pleasant hamlet with a population of 3,460 is our last glimpse of “civilization” before heading into the wilderness and our first taste of it again upon exiting. Although there are several other entry points to the BWCA and Canada’s Quetico just north of the border, we always find ourselves attracted to this charming little town that comes alive in the summertime with canoe enthusiasts heading into the backcountry. (more…)

The Boundary Waters: Our Canoe Safari

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Whenever Matt and I are traveling by canoe, we act like we are in a safari jeep. We are constantly scanning the tops of trees for bald eagles and ospreys, hoping we’ll stumble across a moose feeding in a marsh or searching for beavers around their impressive lodges. While the birds and mammals of the great north woods are far more elusive than their African counterparts, the thrill of spotting something from a canoe is every bit as enjoyable, and we had some memorable moments on this year’s trip. (more…)

The Boundary Waters: An Unexpected Change

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At the beginning of our trip, I remember remarking to Matt about how little had changed in the Boundary Waters since we started going there almost ten years ago now (20 for Matt). The water might be a little higher or lower, the animal sightings might be a bit more frequent or far between, the weather might be pleasant or dicey, but we pretty much know exactly what to expect when we head into canoe country. That is part of the joy of returning to familiar territory.

So, imagine our surprise when we headed into Insula, a lake that we know quite well from previous experience, to discover that the entire southern portion of it had been ravaged by fire. And it wasn’t just Insula either. In fact, almost the entire stretch from Insula out to Lake One had been incinerated and was almost unrecognizable to us.  (more…)

The Boundary Waters: A Taste of the Good Life

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One of the great pleasures after a long day of paddling, portaging and getting all the camp chores done is to string a hammock from a pair of trees close to the water’s edge, grab a book and perhaps a glass of wine, and relax for a while. We were doing just that one day at our beach camp on Lake Alice and thinking it couldn’t get any better, when it absolutely did.

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The Boundary Waters: Choose Your Own Adventure

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HDR Sunset on Lake Two

Choose Your Own Adventure
What’s the first thing you do when you get on an airplane? I don’t know about you, but I am one of those people who immediately opens up the in-flight magazine to study the world map and check out all the cool places I hope to travel to in the not-too-distant future. This slight obsession with maps is one of the things that makes traveling in the Boundary Waters right up my alley.

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The Boundary Waters: Love at First Paddle

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This summer marks the eighth time that Matt and I have spent a week of our summer canoe camping in the Boundary Waters. Tucked in a remote corner of Minnesota’s great north woods, it’s one of our favorite places to travel when we want to get away from it all and one of the Midwest’s best-kept secrets. Matt was introduced to this area almost twenty years ago when a college friend of his organized a ten-day trip for him and their buddies. As you might have guessed, it was love at first paddle for Matt, and what’s not to love? (more…)