No, we haven’t got lost on a forest road or eaten by bears. The internet was out here at the campground Sunday. We took a ride Sunday evening on one of the forest service roads where private ranches are. Beautiful places to live. “Our” mountains are getting more snow every day.
On Monday, we left, taking the 270+ mile long San Juan Highway Loop, also known as the Million Dollar Highway. We went from Ridgway to Ouray, then the fun began. We were on a winding, climbing road that had no guardrails. The leaves were beautiful, and the rock formations and mountains were unbelievable. Pictures do not do them justice, and seeing them in person just seemed surreal.
We drove on from Ouray to Silverton and arrived just as the steam train from Durango arrived. The other train was leaving Silverton, heading to Durango. Both were beautiful little western towns. Then we headed to Cortez, which is the gateway for the Mesa Verde National Park. We arrived late in the afternoon and rested, then headed out Tuesday morning for the park. The pictures I have seen for Mesa Verde in no way compared to being there and seeing it in person. We drove a 40 mile loop into the park and we were able to get close enough to see one of the cliff dwellings without having to walk too far.
I saw one coyote throughout our whole drive. There is a lodge that you can stay in inside the park and they say all around the lodge and on all the hiking trails are archaeological sites, but you can’t pick up even an arrowhead or shard of pottery. We visited the quilt store when we got back to Cortez, then back to the hotel. I called it an early evening and Tony explored the pawn shops and then ate at Wendy’s. This morning when we got up it was raining. The weather forecast was for the rain to be mostly to our south. We stopped at the Ute Indian Museum as we headed out of town. The rain got harder and the temperature dropped. When we left Cortez, it was 53. The ranches were beautiful that we passed, at least what we could see of them. We topped out at over 11,000 feet just before getting to Telluride and the temperature had dropped to 32 and it was snowing. We weren’t sure if we would climb higher or go down in altitude and we were only about 40 miles from the campground. Thankfully, the rain slacked off a bit and the temperature climbed back into the 50’s as we made it back to Ridgway. It has been raining here all evening – we are wondering if we’ll have snow in the morning, since the temperature really drops at night. We shall see.
GA Gypsies - Fulltiming 