We have been in Crested Butte for almost two weeks. We have not hiked, or biked (never going to happen), or fished, and yet we have been busy. That is the thing about CB, I love just being here. We are reconnecting with neighbors and friends and meeting new people who have moved in since we left last September. Crested Butte has become very popular and not just for weekend visitors or vacationers. We have at least five new permanent or semi-permanent (like us) neighbors. 

After driving twenty-seven hours in two days to get here, we were exhausted so it took us a few days to acclimate. The first task we usually undertake is buying flowers for our deck. It is our own version of the Queen’s flag. Flower baskets show we are in residence. Last winter, Evans participated in an online auction to try to save the town’s movie theater. One of the things he bought was a gift certificate for flower baskets. The benefit of shopping for flowers in July is they are half-off. I now have flower baskets bigger than my porch. There are petunias in my hair as I write. 

Crested Butte is a very small town. There is one grocery store, one hardware store that is also a gas station and a mini-mart, and several boutiques, outdoor, fly-fishing, or mountain biking shops. Gunnison, which is thirty miles away, has two grocery stores, two hardware stores, and a Wal-Mart. What there is not, is a full-service nail salon. You can’t swing a dead cat in our neighborhood in Nashville without hitting six huge nail salons, which is why I have pretty false nails in Nashville. I made the mistake of not having them taken off before we came out. Evans is a sport and agreed to take me to Montrose, a town bigger than Gunnison that does have full-service nail salons, as well as a Target, a Dairy Queen, and a Murdock’s. Murdock’s is a ranch store which is different from a farm store. That could be its own blog post. Suffice it to say it is Evans’ favorite. 

We usually wait until I hit the mid-summer stir-crazies before we drive one-hundred miles each way to Montrose. It is an even bigger challenge now because it is a two-lane highway that is completely closed Monday through Friday while they widen the road. The drive is beautiful. It winds through canyons, along the Blue Mesa Reservoir, and into the high desert near the San Juan mountains. We have learned to always have a full tank of gas, because that is all there is between Gunnison and Montrose. This is not a heavily populated area. 

We drove through Montrose to look around before my mid-afternoon nail appointment. I spotted a liquor store on the far end of town, and we decided to stop. Evans’ Covid hobby has been collecting single malt scotch. He has, shall we say, several. The one thing he has not been able to find is a Brucihladdich Octomore. I have no idea why it is special, but it is. The people at all the liquor stores in Nashville just shake their heads sadly when he has asked for it. I tried to special order it for Christmas to no avail. I looked for it in Florida and they had never even heard of it. We wandered into this liquor store on the outskirts of Montrose, Colorado and found TWO BOTTLES covered in dust. They had been MARKED DOWN because they were not selling. I squealed like a six-year-old and made a scene. Evans was more than rewarded for taking me to town to get my nails done.

Since our trip, we are settling in, acclimating, and reconnecting with friends. Concerts are finally back and more crowded than ever. People were so glad to be together, you could barely hear the musicians. There were twenty people at church on Sunday plus we had refreshments on the lawn afterwards. The farmers market took over Elk Avenue on Sunday and I stood in line with half of CB to buy bread. It was worth the wait. The mountains have been hidden behind smoke from the Utah and California fires but are finally visible today after a couple of days of pouring rain. I am wearing a sweatshirt over another shirt, because there is a cool breeze, but it is too pretty to be inside. Tonight, we are headed to a rodeo. We may not have nail salons in Crested Butte, but what we do have more than makes up for it.