Wednesday, August 8, 2018

Day 5-Our First Full Day!

Today we had our first full day in Colorado!  We are in a cabin/house with great mountain views and lots of windows which means we see the sun early!  And our morning bird, Rachey, always pops up ready to go and today was no exception even though they got to bed so terribly late last night! 

We took a dirt road called Last Dollar Road and saw so many wonderful views.  We made it fine over the roads in our suburban even though some places were extremely rough.  I think I had several favorites.  One was last dollar road overlook.  It was amazing.  We saw some jeeps drive to the very edge of it to take a cool picture.  We walked to sort of the edge and took lots of pictures.  We also ate lunch at the trailhead on the side of the mountain.  It was perfect.  Cool, wonderful, and Jeff even brought our chairs! I think the whole road took us maybe 5 or 6 hours?  I'm not sure.  The trail goes from a little past Ridgeway over to Telluride. 







This is where she was happy.

I wonder if I could put my arms around one THIS big.

HAPPY!

SO Gorgeous!  The outlook point is behind him.

People drove up there!


These goofies.  This is what happened when I asked for a cheese!

Hug.  One cooperated.  haha!



Zane loved kicking, pulling, and tearing rotton logs and stumps.

Lunch!

Yay!
When we came out by Telluride, we decided to try and find a free gondola that we had read about.  It was so cool.  We drove to Mountain Village and road two gondolas.  One through Mountain Village, then had to get off and ride another to San Sophia and stay on it to Telluride.  The kids really liked it even though it was a little bit scary!  One the way back, it stopped two times in midair!  That was startling and the second time it stopped suddenly and our gondola hung there swinging!  Wow!  Exciting and scary at the same time!



Pretty flower planters in the middle of the street in Telluride.

So fun!  She needed to hold on though!




Almost to the Telluride station.

We didn't stay that long in Telluride.  We had told the kids that we were going shopping and Rachel wanted to spend some money so bad.  So we went into a grocery store to look for ice cream and she spotted the toys.  She bought a jar of bubbles and a glowstick and was as happy as could be.  She even gave the money to the cashier herself and took her change.  :)  We found a free bench (it was very busy in town) in the shade and we ate our ice cream bars happily.  Just thinking about it now, we were surprised that they weren't melted by the time we ate them and well of course, it's much cooler here in Colorado than it is in Texas!

On the way back up to Mountain Village where our car was parked!





After that we drove home on the highway going through Ridgeway and stopping at a grocery store to buy Zane some syrup ( I really thought I brought it) and some more eggo waffles, his favorite.  And then we came back to our home away from home and had baked potatoes and lloyd's bbq on a bun.  And goodies.  :)

A great day of vacation for our family!  I can tell this is going to go by fast!  I have lots more pictures, I will have to show you in person if you want to see!

Road Trip! Days 3 and 4!

We left Leakey about 7:15 on Monday morning.  We drove and drove and drove until we reached Bernallilo, NM.  The end.  :)  Okay, I'll elaborate just a little.  We went through West Texas.  Oh wow.  It was long and flat with lots of scruffy plants and dirt, dirt, and more red dirt. 
Oh it went on for miles.  I think Jeff took pictures of the red dirt because I was driving.

We had storms on both sides of us but only got a few drops on the windshild!


Great highway with the sighting of a mountain in the distance!
As we got a little further into New Mexico, it was still really dry, but the country started changing a little bit for the better.  Albuquerque was pretty some mountains around it, but it was such a big city!  We got there about rush hour to thanks to road construction that delayed us 45 minutes.  We were second in a line of around 100 cars stopped on the highway because they were resurfacing the road.  Anyway, Jeff said it was about like driving through Houston, not San Antonio.  So that was good.  We ate at Blake's Lotaburger and it was okay.  The kids got huge chocolate milks!  I've never seen a fast food place give huge milks like that.  So that was a plus, but other than that, just ordinary fast food.





We got a prime parking spot at the hotel that night with our bikes backed in and that worked out well.  The kids LOVED the hotel and did outstanding in it.  They were so cute.  We all enjoyed the breakfast downstairs in the morning and then off we went to Durango!!


Highway 550 was a wonderful four lane road until we got closer to Durango.  Then this!

Durango!
We arrived about noon and saw a park off the highway called Santa Rita Park that had our names written on it.  We sat on the grass, really lush soft grass and watched the kids play and ate lunch.  We walked next to the Animas River and checked out the new water treatment plant they were building (nice, hah), and then went to a forest service place so Jeff could get some information.  We bought groceries and finally got on the road to Ouray!  It took 2 hours to get to our house/cabin and along the way there was some noise coming from the back of the car...come to find out it was chips popping and canned biscuits bursting!




This was a cool area in the park.  Called Harmony Park.


Busted Biscuits!!!


We had a great trip and a safe trip and are so glad to be here!