We’ve had more than our fair share of traveling over the last few months, and I promise we do more than just flit about the country! 🙂 I taught an overload class earlier in the summer, so June and July were swamped – it was so nice to have some time off in August.
We had one last trip of the summer a few weeks ago when we visited Colorado with my family. Now that Grandpa’s passed away and Grandma has late-stage Alzheimer’s, it was really special to go back and remember the places we went growing up when we visited them.
Some of our highlights:
- Seeing Grandpa and Grandma’s old house in Cortez.
- Staying for four days at Olio Ranch with no electricity! Lots of fishing, napping, reading, gaming, etc.
- Visiting the Ouray natural hot springs. They’d completely re-done this pool since the last time we were there – it used to be very rustic, with what I remember as a stone or rock bottom. Now it looks more like a pool-pool, with different levels, temperatures, etc. The evening we were there, the sun set and we kept seeing small bats fly down and dip across the water, taking little drinks! Everything there is kind of in a basin with mountains all around, so it was a really beautiful site.
- Jeeping through the mountains – we went on a lot of the old paths we did when we were little, including Corkscrew Gulch, Red Mountain Pass, Cinnamon Pass, Hurricane Ridge, and others.
- Walking around Telluride and seeing this little pup watching guard in his shop.
- Taking the free tram rides from Mountain Village to Telluride and back.
- Visiting the “Bar-D” chuckwagon in Durango where you get a cafeteria-style meal of baked potato, beans, roll, applesauce, and spice cake (same menu for 50 years) with lemonade or coffee, followed by a show where the wranglers do Americana/folk songs.
- Taking the train from Silverton to Durango – we saw some beautiful views along the way.
- The third picture of the fence is along side Ralph Lauren’s 16,000 acre ranch in CO. It’s absolutely gorgeous property (even with as little as we saw from the outside). Here’s an article with more info and pictures.
- The picture of the white house on the cliff is at the top of the Telluride waterfall where ice climbers come to do international competitions each year. The house is for sale now, but the previous owners who built the property supposedly had a bunch of kids! Which would be scary for me, having a house literally on a cliff, with a waterfall right next to it!
School starts for me later this week, so it’s back to the grind! Excited for a new year.
Hope all of you have a great week ahead!
