Category Archives: NM/CO Trip

NM/CO Trip, Random thoughts

The High Points: Breckenridge, Frisco, and Vail

At long last, the last blog recap of our Colorado Trip in May/June. I like to really build suspense.

Oklahoma! Not just an amazing musical.

So many cliff dwellings…they must have seen them on Instagram or something.

Ouray or the (Million Dollar) Highway

Okay, so the Black Canyon is really pretty black

One Night in Crested Butte isn’t enough

Gorgeous Royal Gorge and Lots of Rain in Mueller State Park

We left off in Mueller State Park and then headed to Breckenridge. We were spending the night in Frisco before the conference started in Vail. When I originally planned this trip, we were going to head home after Mueller, but when Louie got invited to his conference, it magically worked out with just one extra night!

In grad school I was lucky enough to be able to spend two summers playing with the National Repertory Orchestra in Breckenridge, Colorado. It truly spoiled me for all other mountains, at least for awhile. I had also been back a few times to visit, but not in over a decade and never with Louie. I had wanted to stay overnight in Breck, but it was more than we wanted to pay (many of the places to stay seemed more geared towards longer stays, so they would have a reasonable night fee but a high cleaning fee which would make more sense if you were there for a week or something), and the places I found to reserve camping were already full by the time we needed to book. I did find some affordable places in Frisco, so I booked a night at the Snowshoe Motel (which when I just googled it now suggested I google “snowshoe motel death” and found that somebody was murdered there in 2014, but I digress, and it was a lovely motel, seriously). But I’m getting ahead of myself.

As always, we had an amazing drive to Breckenridge. The route from Mueller State Park to Breckenridge was all state roads and was beautiful. We went through Fairplay and over Hoosier Pass. We got to Breckenridge and had lunch at the Breckenridge Brewery where I had spent a lot of time in the past. It had changed, but also hadn’t changed, you know what I mean?

Then we found a place to park near the Riverwalk Center and walked around the town. It was a busy day and people were out and about, but I enjoyed looking to see what I recognized, and sharing the town with Louie. Breckenridge is surrounded by gorgeous mountains on all sides, and is really a special place. It’s also totally crowded and expensive, and full of tourists and traffic, but that’s to be expected in today’s world.

The Riverwalk Center is where the orchestra I was with performed. It used to be more of a tent structure and they’ve made it more permanent.
I spent a summer looking at this view from the Tannhauser Condominiums on Main Street. They were still there!
The Blue River!

After a few hours, we were ready to head to Frisco and check into our hotel. We got cleaned up and went to do some laundry in a nearby laundromat (ah, road trip troubles), which was easy enough. Frisco is a cute little mountain too as well, but less busy, and we were still early in the season, so it was surprisingly un-busy. We had dinner at the High Side Brewery (they had a BBQ truck too.)

The next morning we had the hotel breakfast and then checked out of the hotel and headed for a hike in Frisco. I found a loop called the Frisco Peninsula Loop which contained the Lakeshore, Perimeter and Buzzsaw Loops. I suppose it was really more of a biking loop, but we had a great time hiking and enjoying the views.

After the hike, we were pretty hungry and decided Mexican was in order. I remember having a pretty good lunch at a Tex-Mex place in Frisco in the past, but we found something better, a place called Cielo Oaxaca that I highly recommend! They had excellent mole sauce and everything was delicious.

Then we headed DOWN to Vail. it would be a relief to spend a night before 9000 feet, you know!

Louie had a conference in Vail at the Grand Hyatt, so we checked in there. It was a terrific room with a balcony, and it was wonderful to hang out in and relax. Since we spent 5 days there, I’ll just give you some general things we did and some highlights rather than a day-by-day.

The view from the room, not amazing but absolutely lovely

We ate at The George in downtown Vail twice: they had a terrific happy hour special on food and drinks and we loved the vibe. We also ate at La Cantina for dinner once and had breakfast at Two Arrows Coffee. We mostly had lunches and other breakfasts at the hotel, which was naturally quite overpriced but very convenient. The food in Vail was really pricey and though I’m sure there were many amazing restaurants there, Louie’s conference took up his time so we didn’t do an evening out with an expensive restaurant.

We were able to do a few hikes. We hiked the Strawberry Lane Trail, which was mostly just hiking up ski areas, but like we said, we don’t have ski areas to hike up and across in St Louis. We also hiked the Grouse Creek Loop in Minturn (we had to get the car out of the valet parking for this one), which was a lovely hike. We kept running into people who saw a moose, starting with a man at the beginning warning us that just up the trail a moose tried to attack his dog, which we warned other people about, but never saw a moose ourselves. We saw some moose tracks in the mud, and we even heard the story that evening at the banquet, about how some man had been attacked by a moose on the Grouse Creek Loop that morning (except we saw the man and it wasn’t him, it was his dog, and his dog was okay, they were just shaken up) so we really got to experience how rumors get started, but like I said, sadly no moose for us.

Louie’s poster for his poster session
There was a lot of snow still remaining!
We visited the Betty Ford Alpine Gardens one evening.
The closest we came to a moose
The tent where they held the poster sessions at the conference.

Honestly, the hotel was nice, but it was a bit under construction, which was annoying. There was a path to walk to downtown Vail, but parts were diverted due to construction as well. The hotel did have a wonderful free shuttle to Lionshead and Vail Village, which ran quite often, and would also take you back. We took advantage of it several times, and often ended up walking back in the evening as the weather was lovely and we wanted to get exercise (and it was downhill slightly, hah.) I loved our time in Vail, but finally it was time to go home!

We visited with friends in Denver en route, just for lunch, and then drove most of the way across Kansas. I won’t bother mentioning where we stayed overnight, but we didn’t care for it, but we got up early and finished the drive the next day and we were glad to be home!

I hope you enjoyed reading these blog recaps of our trip. I’m sorry it took me so long to get through, but perhaps that just increased the excitement? Please leave a comment if you are reading, I love hearing from readers 🙂

NM/CO Trip

Gorgeous Royal Gorge and Lots of Rain in Mueller State Park

Welcome to another recap of our trip in the beginning of the summer. Today is my brother’s birthday, so I will dedicate this post to him. Happy Birthday, Jesse!

Previous posts:

Oklahoma! Not just an amazing musical.

So many cliff dwellings…they must have seen them on Instagram or something.

Ouray or the (Million Dollar) Highway

Okay, so the Black Canyon is really pretty black

One Night in Crested Butte isn’t enough

I wanted to see the Royal Gorge Bridge, and despite some advice to the contrary, it made the most sense to spend the night in Canon City and see the Bridge first thing in the morning. After seeing Crested Butte and Ouray it was a bit of a disappointment arriving in Canon City. (Sorry, Canon City people!)

We stayed at an inexpensive roadside motel with great reviews, which I would say were overblown. It was fine, but I wish we might have shelled out a little more money, or perhaps just camped along the highway somewhere. Oh well! Not all itinerary options will be perfect.

The neon sign was pretty cool though.

Anyway, we had dinner in the downtown area at a place called World’s End Brewery, and then watched a silly TV show starring Arnold Schwarnegger on the computer.

Day 13: We woke up and found a coffee shop called Cafe Belay, which was terrific: delicious coffee, awesome breakfast burritos, and a fun vibe. We loved the coffee shop and it raised our opinion of Canon City and put us in really good moods.

Next we drove the Skyline Drive, which was actually pretty terrifying and worth doing if you have somebody who is okay driving on sccary roads. It was on our way out of town and we thought it was worth doing. There was a part where you could see dinosaur footprints. It’s insane to try to think about being somewhere where dinosaurs actually walked!

These are dinosaur footprints, the bumpy parts, apparently!
Skyline Drive. It’s one way, and we had parked and walked up a little trail to get more view.

Next we headed to the Royal Gorge Bridge. Despite knowing it was a big tourist trap, we definitely enjoyed our stay. We beat the crowds by 1) getting there early and 2) being early in the season. You pay an entrance fee to get up close, and that gets you the gondola ride as well. You can also pay extra for other activites like rock climbing and zip lining, but we thought we had spent enough.

The Royal Gorge Bridge, an engineering marvel!

We got there right before the gondolas opened, and realized we should probably take the gondola across first, and then walk back, since there weren’t any crowds yet.

Inside the gondola!

The gondola ride was great–it was super fun to ride across and look down. My fear of heights usually doesn’t extend to mechanical things, as I have more faith in them than my own ability not to trip and fall.

You get off the gondola on the other side, and you could ride back, but we wanted to walk, so we headed down the hill to the other side of the bridge. They make you walk by some other paid attractions, just in case you change your mind too. We stopped in to see the movie, which was interesting, except it had a character that was really geared towards kids and was super annoying, so I would rate it as a mixed thing, and would have preferred just to learn more about the bridge and gorge without the weird kid part.

What a lovely view!
The gondolas passing in the air

When you walk across the bridge you get some amazing views.

Around the middle of the bridge!
The bridge is lined with flags from all of the states. This is Missouri’s.

Anyway, we had a little ice cream snack on the other side of the bridge and then decided to head out. Our next stop was Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. As usual, the drive there was beautiful!

I didn’t know too much about Florissant Fossil Beds except that it was close to where we were going, and it looked worth doing. We started with a picnic lunch, and then headed into the Visitor’s Center to watch a movie and look at the museum. In a nutshell, there are a lot of fossils there as well as petrified tree stumps.

The Big Stump, great name!

We took a path named The Petrified Forest Loop to see various stumps, including the largest one, aptly named The Big Stump.

Selfie in front of the Big Stump
The Big Stump from a distance, it was the real highlight!

Anyway, we walked around the path, but a storm looked like it was headed our way, so we thought we might should move on. (What is my grammar here?) We headed over by car to see the Hornbeck Homestead, in a nearby but different part of the park as well.

The Hornbeck Homestead
This little fellow was wandering around

Our home for the next two nights would be a campsite at Mueller State Park, so we headed there next to set up, hoping that the rain would hold off. It did, enough for us to set up, but then it rained, and poured.

Our campsite

Our site was gorgeous. It would have had a view of Pikes Peak except for the cloud cover, and it honestly might have been the best site in the entire park. But it was raining, and all our plans involved the outdoors, so decided to head to a nearby brewery for a drink and maybe food.

We initially thought the rain was letting up, and as we drove out of the campground we saw a double rainbow, and immediately pulled over to take photos.

It was amazing to see!

The rain continued however, and we had a nice dinner at Paradox Brewery Company. We returned to the campsite before it got too dark, and it did finally stop raining long enough for us to get a little fire going.

Mueller State Park was at about 9600 feet of elevation, and it was cold. In retrospect we should have brought our mummy bags, but we didn’t. It was a chilly night of sleep!

Day 14: The next morning we had a reservation to drive up Pikes Peak. It was damp and cold in the morning and we decided to skip cooking at the campsite and get a coffee on the way instead. We had to throw away some trash at a trashcan with a chain to move to keep it bear safe, and the chain was covered in ice, so that tells you how cold it was. We stopped at a coffee shop, Righteous Grounds Coffee Roasters and got some coffees plus some scones right from the oven. I had been joking on our walk in that I was hungry and didn’t care what we ate, and Louie had said he was just going to ask for two human rations for breakfast. But then they pulled out the freshly baked scones and we figured that sounded pretty good!

Anyway, we got to Pikes Peak but they told us that the peak wasn’t open due to the weather (blizzard conditions up top!). They led us to believe that it might open later, and we figured we might as well drive up as far as we could, so we did.

It was a nice drive with some lovely views, but we got to the end of where they had the road blocked and yup, we couldn’t pass further. We could see up higher that the snow was blowing quite a lot. Yes, snow, and yes, we were wearing coats by this point.

The road went over that ridge ahead of us and you can see the snow blowing around.

Disappointed, we drove back down. We headed towards Colorado Springs and the Garden of the Gods next. What a different landscape!

The traffic was crazy, so we decided to pull over and park and set off on foot. You can just drive through Garden of the Gods and see a lot, but you would be in bumper to bumper traffic, which wasn’t super appealing. We did a loop trail I found on All Trails, which covered the Palmer, Buckskin-Charley, Niobrara and Bretag Trails. It was about 4 miles, fairly flat, and was a great way to see Garden of the Gods!

I’m pretty sure the biggest mountain there is Pikes Peak.

After our hike, we were hungry again (the scones didn’t have a huge amount of lasting power) so we looked for a nice restaurant in nearby Manitou Springs. I found a cool looking vegetarian place called Adam’s Mountain Cafe, and we really enjoyed our meal there! The rest of Manitou Springs, not as much. We parked and walked around downtown (my knee was hurting me a bit by this point from all the hiking) and it was overcrowded and very tourist trap like. The springs were cool, but we just didn’t love the place, and after a bit decided to get out as it just wasn’t making us happy.

Louie drinking water from a spring

It starting raining on our way back and we decided to just go to Paradox Brewing Company again for dinner: pizza and beer this time. It had been really busy at Paradox the night before but this night was totally different, less busy, very chill, and we loved it again. Louie decided to buy a Paradox T-Shirt to commemorate our times there.

We were able to make a fire again at our campsite, and the nice thing about the campsite was that the gravel bottom of it kept the tent nice and dry, but sadly still absolutely freezing. We brought more clothes into the tent and did our best to stay warm that night, but it was still a chilly night!

Day 15: It was raining in the morning a bit, but the rain let up finally and we decided we’d better pack up the tent while we could! It was funny: under the tent was completely dry (tiny gravel ground cover for the win) but the tent was damp: of COURSE the last place we camp was raining so we had to pack everything up wet. Oh well, we had had good luck with the weather before Mueller and at least the scenery was beautiful.

We decided we couldn’t leave without doing a hike, so we went for a hike! It was a little rainy seeming, but it let up pretty quickly and we had a nice hike through the woods. We took a loop sort of trail from Revenuer’s Ridge to the Lost Pond, and felt at the end that we had accomplished something and gotten a good look at Mueller State Park.

We would love to return there to camp again and go to Paradox Brewery, and maybe try Pikes Peak again! Oh, and we stayed in site #42, but don’t tell everybody, it IS the best site! (Near pit toilets though, not real bathrooms, but there are bathrooms a short drive or long walk away. and the pits were well maintained, probably because so many neighbors had RV’s.)

That’s where I will leave you. Next we will head to Breckenridge and Frisco for the day and one night, and then to Vail for Louie’s conference.

NM/CO Trip

One Night in Crested Butte isn’t enough

.

Oklahoma! Not just an amazing musical.

So many cliff dwellings…they must have seen them on Instagram or something.

Ouray or the (Million Dollar) Highway

Okay, so the Black Canyon is really pretty black

Previous trip recaps, so please check them out.

This is the continuation of a trip Louie and I took in May/June through New Mexico and Colorado. My goal for the trip was to visit some places we had never been, or some places we had never been together.

When we left off we were leaving the South Rim of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. Now, there are two things I loved about this trip: 1) none of the drives between places were very long and 2) all of the drives were absolutely gorgeous and stunning and awe inspiring.

From the Black Canyon we headed to Gunnison first (yesterday I misspoke and said Gunnison when I meant Montrose: I have corrected that, but I’m clarifying in case you read yesterday) through the National Curecanti Recreation Area. As expected and enjoyed, this was a delightful drive. We did have to sit through some construction, probably about 30 minutes waiting for a one way road to go our way, but it was fine and we continuing listening to a podcast about Shackleton and his adventures in Antarctica. It is important to note that anytime we experienced the slightest amount of hardship such as cold, tiredness, etc, we compared it to Shackleton, exclaiming that we knew exactly how he felt! In any case, we continued on our route.

At the Visitor’s Center in Black Canyon I had picked up a hiking brochure and chosen a short hike along our route called the Neversink Trail in order to get out of the car a bit and also explore this part of the country. It was only about a 1.5 mile hike, so it seemed perfect to stretch our legs.

Walking along the Gunnison River

However, after walking for about 5 or 10 minutes, the trail was flooded out, so we had to turn back. Oh well!

We thought, oh we can pass that, and then we looked into the distance and realized it was just totally flooded out.

So, we hit the road again. It should be mentioned that we passed some cool places and several campgrounds that would be worth visiting by me or someone else.

Anyway, next we got to the town of Gunnison. It looked pretty cute and we were hungry, so we parked, and wandered over to a place called the Sherpa Cafe for some indian food. It was really tasty! After that it was only about a 30 minute drive up to Crested Butte. Again, this was an absolutely gorgeous drive.

We were only staying in Crested Butte for one night–it was a later addition to my itinerary, and in retrospect I wish we had stayed there longer and skipped the next part but I really did want to see the Royal Gorge Bridge (another day, I’ll tell you later). We checked into the Old Town Inn and got settled and then headed out again.

We thought we would drive around a bit and get our bearings and then find a short hike. We ended up driving up a wonderful gravel road called Gothic Road for several miles and enjoying the amazing views.

Finally we got to a little town, with signs about scientists.

We saw a little visitor’s center and popped in and talked with a friendly woman about the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory and all the things they do there, studying the Rocky Mountains all summer long! It was really cool to learn about. Shortly past there the road ended (for now) as it was too snowy, so we walked up a ways and then decided to head back down to town.

I’d found a nice trail on All Trails called the Woods Walk so we went to do that next. It was a beautiful hike through some aspen forests and then above a river. It ended with a place that was fairly muddy/a bit flooded, so we decided at that point we had gone far enough and turned back.

We really loved Crested Butte. We were very early in the summer season, so a lot of the hikes were still closed, but we enjoyed just walking around, and we enjoyed how NOT crowded it was. I’m sure that changes later!

We got back and cleaned up for dinner and walked into the downtown area–our hotel was on the outskirts of the downtown, so very convenient. We decided to get dinner at a cool looking Mexican place called Bonez. I would highly recommend it! We shared the “stoplight salsa” which had red, yellow (pineapple habanera) and green salsa, and I had mushroom enchiladas and both were absolutely delicious.

After dinner we went and got into the hotel’s hot tub for a bit before going to bed. The hotel was perfectly nice and quiet, and I would recommend it.

The next morning I had found a hike on All Trails that was open, so we checked out and headed there. It was called the Upper Upper Loop on All Trails, and parking was extremely limited–the lot was full at first, so we drove around a bit deciding what to do, and then finally checked back again and there was a space, so we headed out on the hike.

It was a lovely hike, with views of Mount Crested Butte and the town of Crested Butte, along with lots of birds, wildflowers, and chipmunks. We saw quite a few mountain bikers, and several other people hiking.

We decided to turn back after 1.5 or so miles, not because it wasn’t nice, but because we had gotten a later start than planned. We enjoyed hiking back and then decided to do one more short hike in a slightly different area of Crested Butte. All Trails called it the East River Hike, and it was about 3 miles round trip as well.

We made it most of the way before turning back due to some mud. I should say that I was being extra cautious about mud after slipping in it at home before the trip and hurting my knee! My knee was mostly holding up okay: it hurt most after sitting for awhile and trying to stand, so getting out of the car a lot to walk actually seemed to help the most.

The storm clouds looked to be rolling in on this hike and we did pull on our rain gear at one point. It started raining more right at the end and we ran the rest of the way to the car!

After that, we got into the car and headed south. Our next stop was Canon City to see the Royal Gorge, and I’d booked a hotel overnight again.

It was another amazing drive. We went over Monarch Pass near Salida. We got out to take a few pictures and it was freezing!

There was some sort of gondola, which wasn’t running at the time, but may be now.

And then we drove through the Bighorn Canyon ( I swear there are several Bighorn Canyons in the country though) and saw some amazing places to camp (jealous, in retrospect, but also we HAVE camped along a highway before and it can be hard to sleep even in a beautiful setting with truck noises).

Anyway, that’s where I leave you for today. Crested Butte was gorgeous and the downtown was adorable. The ski area looked like all ski areas do, nothing special in my opinion, though if you are a skier you might love it. In any case, I highly recommend visiting!

NM/CO Trip

Okay, so the Black Canyon is really pretty Black

Oklahoma! Not just an amazing musical.

So many cliff dwellings…they must have seen them on Instagram or something.

Ouray or the (Million Dollar) Highway.

Day 9: We left Ouray and headed to Montrose. Our first stop was at a laundromat to do laundry, very exciting but necessary. I have decided that it makes sense to do laundry about 1 time per week traveling, and that laundromats really are pretty quick and don’t take much time. We were out in an hour or so, very fast! Then to Black Canyon of the Gunnison.

We had site A27 reserved for two nights, so that was our first stop, to get our bearings and go ahead and set up the tent. Getting the tent and stuff out of the car frees up some space for other things, so it’s kind of nice when we can. After setting up the tent and checking out the pit toilets (which were, honestly, the best pit toilets I have ever used: clean, with a deodorizing spray that spritzed automatically fairly often.)

Very pretty campsite!

First we went to drive down to the East Portal. It’s a beautiful drive down to the river, fairly steep and windy.

There’s a campground at the bottom, which Louie had stayed at in a previous visit, but it doesn’t take reservations so I wasn’t sure. It turned out that we could have grabbed a site, but we were also happy with our current site. We walked along the Gunnison River (which is what carved out the canyon) and even saw a snake!

We may not have seen many other animals on this trip but there was no shortage of snakes.

We had a quick lunch along the river at a picnic ground and then went back to the top of the Canyon to do more sightseeing.

It’s hard to really show the scope of the Black Canyon in pictures: it’s called the Black Canyon because it is deep and narrow, and the other side is pretty close, so the sun doesn’t shine into it very much. We did the whole, drive along the road and pop out at all the stops and walk along the walks, marvel at everything, and take a million pictures of approximately the same view. It was great fun, and Louie even got into taking bird pictures which meant all of this took even more time.

Around 6:30 pm we hadn’t quite seen everything, (that is, all the stops) but we decided to head back and make dinner: we had two nights here which meant there was plenty of time the next day.

We enjoyed a lovely fire, as it got fairly chilly as the sun set.

The campground was lovely, except for we could hear one campsite playing music loudly and talking until late at night, past quiet hours. This annoys me, especially the music playing: I think there should be no music allowed in the National Park campgrounds because it scares away wildlife!

In the morning we heard rustling around our campsite(finally the people were quiet, ha) and I assumed it was a nearby camper, but it was actually a small group of deer poking around.

Perhaps not the best deer picture, but you can get the idea.

We headed out on a loop hike from the campground to the visitor’s center and back, on the Rim Rock Trail, the Oak Flat Loop Trail and the Uplands Trail. Some parts were a little scary, as it goes down below the edge a bit and then back up, but overall it was just a nice hike, with a bit of sun by the end. (You can basically climb into the canyon, but you can’t really hike into it, and there are very limited permits to go into the canyon, which I had no desire for anyway, but the Oak Flat Trail dips over the edge a little bit.

We were back at the campground so we had lunch, relaxed a bit, and saw some more deer walking around. Well, likely the same deer.

Anyway, then we refilled our waters and headed out to “finish” the South Rim. We had a few more stops and the last one had a little hike to Lookout Point. It was beautiful: we saw a super cool lizard and some wild turkeys in addition to amazing scenery.

I loved these craggly trees.
That’s some farmland that borders the park, with an amazing set of mountains behind it.
This lizard just sat there letting us take his photo. He was even more colorful than he appears in this photo.
The Black Canyon of the Gunnison.

The second night we had another, closer, set of annoyingly loud music playing campers, who continued partying past quiet hours. The camp host was not nearby and I think they just didn’t seem to care that the campground was so loud. It was unfortunate, because the setting was absolutely gorgeous and most people were quiet and respectful, normal national park campers, with just a few rude groups which can ruin the whole vibe. I wish people would find a different place to party and that the campground hosts/rangers had made sure quiet hours were observed. It gets light around 5:30 am so it’s nice to get some sleep while it’s dark!

Anyway, the next morning we headed out towards our next stop, Crested Butte. I’ll leave things there, and I hope I can get the next installment out more quickly than this one!

One more thing to add: we visited the South Rim of the Black Canyon, You can visit the North Rim as well, but it takes several hours to drive from one to the other: there is no easy way around. So while we could have done that we decided to save it for another trip. It is less busy, supposedly, though we were surprised how busy the South Rim was: everybody said it was not crowded and that hardly anybody went there! I suppose it was Memorial Day Weekend and that probably contributed to the noise and slight busy-ness.

NM/CO Trip, Travel

Ouray or the (Million Dollar) Highway

It was amazing being out in Colorado so early in the summer, since so many of the mountains were snow covered, my favorite!

Previous recaps:

Oklahoma! Not just an amazing musical.

So many cliff dwellings…they must have seen them on Instagram or something.

We left off on Day 7, where we had just finished hiking at Mesa Verde and were heading away. We stopped by downtown Durango first to get lunch. We tried the Durango Diner, and I ordered an omelet with chile relleno, which was delicious and came with really excellent hash browns. It was one of those “sit at the counter” places, and nearly everybody there seemed to know the people working, a real locals place. We wandered around Durango a little more–it was a very cute little town, but nothing that really stuck out for us to want to do.

We had a very annoying time trying to get gas–we assumed it would easy to do since it is a tourist town, but we were wrong. A few out of service gas stations and a lot of annoyingly difficult left turns and we were finally on the way to the “Million Dollar Highway”.

A view from the drive
This was on top of one of the passes, I think Molas Pass, where there was a parking lot to stop at.

It was a gorgeous drive up to Silverton, which is technically where the “Million Dollar” portion starts, but it was pretty before that! We stopped for a quick cup of coffee in Silverton and stretched our legs a bit too. I’d noticed that if I sat for too long in the car my knee hurt a lot more, so I always welcomed the opportunity to get out of the car. This could also just be a sign of aging, I suppose.

Downtown Silverton.

We left Silverton and continued the gorgeous drive. I kept trying to take pictures out the car windows, but honestly, they never look very good, nor do they capture the beauty…it was an amazing and awe-inspiring drive, and I’m so glad I had Louie to drive it!

Getting closer to Ouray for this waterfall.

Anyway, we checked into our hotel in mid to late afternoon. I’d booked two nights at the Matterhorn Inn. We cleaned up and then went out to look around and figure out dinner. We weren’t super hungry after our diner lunch, so we ended up deciding to eat at a nice restaurant called Brickhouse 737 but only order appetizers. It was phenomenal, one of the best meals of our trip. We got foods with morel mushroom and spring peas and everything was fresh and delicious. I didn’t write down what we ate and much of it was off the special’s list, but I highly recommend the restaurant if you want a nice meal in Ouray. You should consider making a reservation, since we got lucky to have a space.

We were exhausted after dinner and just went back to relax.

Day 8:

We had a jeep tour booked with San Juan Scenic Jeep Tours, but needed breakfast first. Our hotel provided vouchers for food at a nearby Mexican Restaurant, but I was concerned about the combination of mexican breakfast and jeep tour, so we went and got coffee and muffins at a coffee shop nearby, Mojo’s Coffee and Teas.

It wasn’t exactly a jeep like I imagined, but a longer jeep with seating in the back for a few rows.

The tour guide was great and personable, and had loads of experience driving (decades!). We were pretty early in the season, so some of the passes that would be available later in the summer were still snowed over. First we headed up to Yankee Boy Basin along a gravel road. We had a lot of fun in the jeep, but we are pretty sure we could have done this route in the Subaru (though Louie was happy to just be riding along)–at one point we got to what our driver decided was the safest place to turn back, and then we saw something like a Nissan Sentra headed our way!

It was fun riding the jeep and hearing old stories from Ouray about jeeping, mining, etc. And the scenery was gorgeous, of course.

It got colder as we went up the mountain and the snow got higher and higher beside us. There was a place where we drove through a little bit of a waterfall and got wet, both there and back.

You can see the wall of snow beside us here!

We didn’t quite make it to Yankee Boy Basin due to too much snow, so then our driver took us up the Amphitheater Trail. This was a true jeep trail–we bottomed out at one point and definitely had a bumpy ride! I have to say I was somewhat glad the earlier trail hadn’t been like that too as several hours of bumpy riding might have been too much.

One funny thing about the tour: the guide kept talking about seeing a bear, and at one point we pulled over and he said, there’s a bear! And we didn’t see it and who knows what that was. Later he had taken some pictures so he sent them over and he included a picture of a bear!

A bear that we definitely didn’t see.

So, Louie was going crazy, like how did he miss that bear? Well, a little bit of sleuthing showed us that the picture was actually from November of 2021, and the tour guide was just pulling our leg, or showing off, or whatever, but the picture definitely wasn’t from our tour, and unlikely a cell phone picture either (too clear for the distance). Too bad though!

After the jeep tour, we grabbed a quick lunch at a place called Kami’s Samis. It was fine, nothing super exciting. We enjoyed sitting outside and watching the town go by though.

Next on the docket was the Perimeter Trail, which is a trail that goes around Ouray, but up in the mountains. We weren’t sure how much we would do, but you can get to it from various points so we thought we’d hike a bit and then see how it went.

Unfortunately I got really freaked out after climbing up some switchbacks, and I headed back down without Louie. He continued on and did a fair bit of it, and enjoyed seeing some waterfalls.

More pictures of Ouray.
Louie on the trail.

We met back later in the day and got cleaned up and headed to dinner. We decided to try the nearby Mexican restaurant called Mi Mexico as it had good reviews and wasn’t terribly expensive.

Mi Mexico

The dinner was excellent, and we had a nice time. I should add that we enjoyed and would recommend the Matterhorn Inn: it was clean and well located, gave free breakfast vouchers, and the front desk was always happy to answer questions and give advice. There was a hot tub, but it was located in the middle of the parking lot so we never did try it out.

Day 9: We thought about doing more hiking, but we were both tired (even though I hadn’t done much, I was tired!) and so we went to Mi Mexico again for our free breakfast. We were a little nervous about having so much mexican food, but the breakfast was very nice (you got to pick from a few different entrees, I got huevos rancheros. Oddly, a ham sandwich was one of the choices.) After breakfast, we got packed up and headed towards Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.

I think that’s a good place to wrap up for now, so until next time!

NM/CO Trip, Random thoughts, Travel

So many cliff dwellings…they must have seen them on instagram or something

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We left off on Day 4 in White Rock, but I have a few editorial comments before I continue with the recap.

I was reading through some old trip recaps, and I realized that Louie and I HAD spent a night in Oklahoma before: evidently we stayed a night in Tulsa on our trip home from New Mexico on a previous trip. Now, obviously it was uneventful as I have no recollection of it, but I thought it was worth mentioning for total accuracy reasons.

And my brother did a little research on Boise City, Oklahoma, and learned that it was inadvertently bombed during WW2, in 1943, by friendly fire. Watch this video if you are interested in learning more! What a crazy story!

So that brings us to White Rock, New Mexico on Day 4 of the trip.

We slept well in the Yurt, and woke up early. We weren’t sure how crowded Bandelier National Monument would get, but it’s always a good idea to try to beat the crowds. We were among the first in the parking lot (yes!) and got loaded up to hike into Frijoles Canyon, the most popular part of the park.

It was really nice to have the place basically to ourselves for awhile. It was a beautiful day, and the views were terrific.

The Native Americans built various buildings into the side of the mountains, tucked into alcoves, down low and up high. There are lots of parts of the buildings left to see, as well as ladders to climb (that the park service added in for us to climb, but likely was a way that the ancestral pueblo people got around.)

As always on these trips, there is tons to learn and forget. We read signs about history, about plants and animals, rocks and other geology, climate, etc, and then promptly forgot most of it.

After seeing the buildings on the Pueblo Loop in Frijoles Canyon, we headed to Alcove House, which is 140 feet up up the cliff, and involved climbing several long ladders. I started up and then decided it wasn’t for me, so I waited down below while Louie went up to see Alcove House.

Look for Louie up high on the ladder!

Another reason I had wanted to go to Bandelier was because there is a trail called the Frey Trail. As it turns out, the trail goes from the campground to the park, and isn’t much to bother with unless you are staying in the campground, which we weren’t. (It didn’t take reservations and I prefer to have everything planned out so we don’t have to stress.)

But we passed by where it ended, and who doesn’t love a trail with their name on it?

We did hike up a little ways, just to say we did. We did!

Anyway, Louie enjoyed the Alcove House, and then we hiked back to the visitor’s center. There were plenty of signs along the way to learn, and then forget, though I did learned about Gambel Oaks, which helped me identify them throughout the entire trip!

We had a quick snack and bathroom break, and had to decide what to do next. We enjoyed a cup of coffee and some cake at the cafe, and then headed out on the Falls Trail, which was supposed the next most popular thing to do after Frijoles Canyon. It was a cool hike, but the weather wasn’t quite as nice and kept lightly raining on us. It was getting hot though, so it was probably for the best.

The Falls!

The trail might have continued further at other times but we got to a place where it was closed off, so we headed back.

After that hike, we decided it was time to go. We stopped by the campground on our way out to see the other end of the Frey Trail.

We even hiked in a little ways, and saw a woodpecker right up close. Louie had left his camera in the car, so he was upset that the one time he didn’t have it, we saw a woodpecker right there!

It was only about mid-afternoon at this point, so we decided to go check out nearby Los Alamos. It’s a weird place out there, lots of restricted areas owned by the Department of Energy, probably housing nuclear weapons but nobody would know (unless you visit mar-a-lago, I suppose?). There’s a National Historical Park in Los Alamos, but it was closed, but there is some stuff to see. We went to the Bradbury Science Museum and learned a lot, but what I didn’t like was that I felt the bomb was glorified and I wanted to see a more nuanced approach: hundreds of thousands of innocent people were killed, and our country did it, and maybe it ended the war but maybe the war was already ending and we didn’t need to kill all those people. So I found being there very upsetting, but Louie enjoyed some of the science stuff, so it was a mixed day for us.

We ate dinner at a Mexican place called El Rigoberto’s in White Rock, and then enjoyed hearing the rain on the yurt as we went to sleep that night. I will say this: White Rock was a nice base for Bandelier, but there aren’t very many restaurant options. There is a good sized grocery store and plenty of gas stations.

Day 5: We woke up and decided to eat breakfast at the Fig and Pig before headed out of town. It was tasty, though oddly busy with a large group of people. We had a 4 1/2 hour drive to Mesa Verde on the docket for this day, and there were a few options as to how to go. We decided to take the route that would head north into Colorado first and then west. We were eager to see some “real” mountains!

The drive was gorgeous, and went through a variety of small towns, like Abiquiu and Tierra Amarilla. We stopped for lunch in Pagosa Springs, which has hot springs and a lovely river through it: we walked around a bit and then had a picnic by the river. (Interesting fact to me: we camped in Pagosa Springs when I was a kid, according to my journal.)

You can see the build up from the hot springs over the years!

After lunch we continued along, and finally made it to Mesa Verde around 3:30, just before the visitor’s center closed, so we had a quick look at the exhibits before checking into our campground. (Also where we camped when I was a kid: even the campground map was similar, nothing really had changed in over 30 years in that sense.)

Campground check in was excruciatingly slow, but we finally made it, and then we had to go pick out our own campsite. I found this stressful, but it wasn’t too busy yet and we drove around trying to figure out what the best option was: there were just a few tent only loops and that is what we chose from. We eventually picked one with a decent view, good privacy, and relatively close but not too close to the bathrooms.

After we set up the camp first (and this picture is from during meal prep, as obviously otherwise we would have everything in the bear box, which is conveniently and scarily location immediately next to the tent, in order to attract the bear to where we are), then we had time for a short hike from the campground. We headed out for a 2 mile hike on the Knife Edge Trail.

Views abounded!

After our hike, we made a fire and our first camping dinner of the trip. (Mac and cheese with tuna and canned peas, yummy!).

One constant of the trip was that the days were warm/hot enough, but as soon as the sun went down it got cold. We thought Mesa Verde would be the coldest, but we were incorrect. However, the sky was the darkest! In the middle of the night I needed to get up to go to the bathroom and I was blown away by the night sky. There were stars upon stars, the milky way, distant universes, who even knows. So many stars that normally you can’t see because of the background lights around you.

Day 6: This morning would start with a tour of Cliff Palace. Several of the cliff dwellings could only be seen with a ranger led tour, which nowadays you have to reserve online, two weeks in advance. But it turned out that during the time we were visiting Cliff Palace was the only one that you could do! It’s too bad, because I was really wanting to try Balcony House again: we had gone when I was a kid and I remember it was scary but really fascinating. However, Cliff Palace is the largest cliff dwelling and I was pleased to secure a time. We ended up arriving too early, of course, because they said to allow an hour from the campground but it didn’t actually take that long. There wasn’t too much to see in the area so we just wandered around and waited for our turn.

The tour has a few scary moments but mostly it’s not bad, and the structure is amazing to see, that it was built when it was built, that it is still standing as much as it is, and that we can see it. It’s all just amazing.

Cliff Palace.

The ranger led a terrific tour and we learned quite a lot about the people who built these houses. One interesting fact was that the people building at Mesa Verde weren’t doing anything particularly unique for the time: these sorts of houses were being built all over at this time, it’s simply that the ones in Mesa Verde have lasted longer over the years. It’s quite fascinating that all of sudden, everybody was building homes the same, as if they saw it on instagram, but it was likely due to trade.

In any case, we got to get up close and personal with the site, and then we climbed a couple of ladders to get out and that was a little scary but I managed.

After Cliff Palace, we had more to see. Unfortunately Wetherill Mesa was closed during this time (construction) but the rest of the part was open. We stopped at all the places, and took pictures and walked around and read stuff and promptly forgot most of it, as usual.

Interesting side bar: my old trip diary said we went to Wetherill Mesa and rode a train. Also we stayed at the campground and it was cold in the morning.

I thought this was interesting: this is a dwelling that isn’t open to the public, but there were people there in it that we could see from the lookout. We saw a trail that was marked “do not enter under penalty of law” or something like that, and I figured out that it was likely part of the route down to the house.

At the Spruce Tree House area, we decided to do a longer hike, the Petroglyph Point Trail. It used to be that you could go inside the Spruce Tree House, but it isn’t currently open to guests.

Petroglyph Point Trail was only 2.3 miles, but it was a lot of challenge, things to squeeze through, step over, lots of ups and downs. We ended up being able to see a cliff dwelling, not in fantastic shape, but one that was out away from the crowds so that was cool.

And then there was the petroglyph panel, which I did not seem to get a really good picture of. It was a little crazy when we got there with an odd amount of people and I must have gotten overwhelmed.

The rest of the hike wasn’t as interesting–there was a place where you had to climb over a couple of huge rocks that was pretty scary/difficulty, but obviously I managed. And we just kept hiking and finally got back to the visitor’s center/area where the hike started. At this point I was pretty tired but we forged ahead with more sightseeing.

Around 6 pm or so we headed back to the camp: we wanted to shower before dinner, so we did that and then enjoyed some Indian food packets from Trader Joe’s while sitting by the fire.

Day 7: We had to pack up in the morning, so we did that first, and then headed out for one more hike before leaving Mesa Verde. We wanted to hike the Point Lookout Trail, which left from the campground, and was 2.2 miles with 400 feet elevation change–doesn’t sound too hard, but it started climbing right away. Good morning to me! The hike was straightforward at least: up to the view, back down. The view was terrific!

We loved seeing Mesa Verde, but we were even more excited about getting closer to those snow capped mountains in the distance. To be fair, we didn’t know if we were going to those mountains or other mountains, but we knew that our next few stops were closer to similar mountains.

That’s where I will stop for this post. We were leaving the Cliff Dwellings portion of the trip and heading into the mountains. Next: the Million Dollar Highway and Ouray awaits!