Vacation Journal

We didn’t do much on Wednesday.

On Thursday we went to Montrose to visit Wal-Mart one last time before we left for Texas.  Then we went for another drive on the Million Dollar Highway to see how much the color had developed since we were there on Saturday.  The change was unbelievable.  I would say it was within three to four days of its peak.  We saw lots of good color.  Unfortunately, it was cloudy so it wasn’t as brilliant-looking as it would have been in sunlight.  Still, it was beautiful.  We had intended to drive over to Ohio and Kebler passes near Crested Butte this morning, but changed our minds when we woke up to rain.  We would have driven over 40 miles of gravel/dirt road on those passes and we decided not to bother because of the rain.  The Denver Post last year had rated the color at Ohio and Kebler Passes as the best in the state in a normal year.  We did catch the color here several years ago, and will try again some other year.  The color this year near Ouray is much better than last year.  It snowed early last year and the cold weather ruined the color.  Apparently if it freezes too soon, the leaves just turn brown and drop off without much color.

Friday we drove the RV to Moab (pulling the Jeep), but we did take a quick drive in the Jeep along the Million Dollar Highway before we left.  We just had to see the color in the bright sunlight we had on Friday morning.  Once again we defied the odds and arrived safely in Moab in spite of riding in a very big vehicle being driven by an old geezer.  I got a little hot hooking up the RV.  The temperature was around 83 degrees.  It’s amazing how hot the 80’s feel when you haven’t experienced those temperatures for six weeks.  We went to a movie (Just Like Heaven) Friday evening.

Saturday we went to downtown Moab for breakfast at the Jailhouse Café, a place famous for its breakfast which is the only meal it serves (6:00 to noon daily).  We ate outside in some very pleasant weather.  Then we drove through the Colorado River Valley east of town.  This is a narrow canyon with sheer cliff walls sticking up several hundred feet.  We took the side road past Castle Rock and went on up to the La Sal Mountains.  We went from 4,100 feet to 9,100 feet.  We took a dirt side road five miles up to Warner Lake.  About 50% of the aspen up there have turned the bright yellow color.  Back in town we had lunch at Eddie McStiff’s, a local hangout where we had eaten in 1997.  In the late afternoon we drove up to Dead Horse Point State Park (near Canyonlands National Park).  This is still what we consider the best single view we have ever seen.  We stayed up on the point until after sunset.  The view was awesome. 

Tomorrow we leave for Bloomfield, New Mexico.  This is pretty much the end of our vacation.  For the next two weeks we will be traveling or visiting family.  This will probably be my last vacation journal entry for this trip.

A week from today we leave for Texas.  It’s hard to believe that we have been here over five weeks already.

Ouray is suffering from the heat wave that is hitting the Midwest.  It got up to 75 degrees here today, much warmer than normal for this time of year.

We stayed around the RV until about 2:00, doing some chores and taking a walk.  Then we went to Ridgway for a late lunch at the Galloping Goose Bakery and Café.  Afterwards we drove over towards Telluride to take a drive on Last Dollar Road (a dirt road).  We saw the house and barns used in the movie True Grit as the home of Mattie, the young lady who hired Rooster Cogburn to find her dad’s murderer.  The house is about to fall in.  No one lives there anymore.  It’s a shame, because it has a nice view of mountains.  We also found several small pockets of color along the road.  The shrubs (mostly scrub oak) are turning nicely.  The aspen are running later than normal.

We also drove along West Dallas Road and East Dallas Road (both dirt roads) to check out some of the countryside north of Mount Sneffels.  We found some interesting countryside as well as the normal things you see around here – birds of all kinds, large groves of aspen, a herd of two-humped camels, interesting canyons, and such.  Once last week, while we were driving back to Ridgway near where East Dallas Road hits the highway, our granddaughter Jayden just up and said I saw a camel.  All of us adults sort of ignored her remark.  Well, today, we found a herd of ten two-humped camels in a field along East Dallas Road about one-quarter of a mile from the highway.  Seven of the camels are white, and three are dark-colored.  Anyway, when we got back on the highway, we noticed that you could see the camels briefly over the short trees along the highway.  Jayden was the only person in the car sharp-eyed enough to see them. 

Back in Ouray, we stopped at the pizza place and got moose tracks ice cream for supper.  The weather had been fantastic, we had enjoyed our drive, and we just felt like having ice cream for supper.

We left the RV at 8:30.  We drove over Lizard Head Pass down to Dolores where we stopped at a quilt store.  We had visited this store about a month ago.  Charolette needed more fabric for a project she is working on, and this store has a large selection.  Then we drove on to Lowry Pueblo, a part of Canyons of the Ancients national Monument.  Lowry is a 1,000-year-old Puebloan village.  It was home to about 40 people.  You have to drive a nine mile long gravel road to get to it.  It has one large stone building with 30 or so rooms and one large kiva.

Then we drove another 20 miles of dirt road to get to Hovenweep National Monument.  The Little Ruin Canyon area of Hovenweep was home to about 300 to 400 people.  It’s actually in Utah (barely).  They were scattered over about ¾ of a mile along both sides of a small canyon.   They built many small stone houses and many stone towers all over the area.  We took the two mile walk that lets you see everything.  The roofs were gone because they were made of wood.  In most of the structures, the stonework was in amazingly good shape.  They did a good job of fitting the stones together.

There were five other areas of Hovenweep that we didn’t go see.  It was getting late, and the other areas are on rough dirt roads.  One of the roads is even a 4-wheel drive road.  Besides, we were hot.  The temperature was in the low 80’s, and we definitely weren’t used to such hot weather.  By the way, if you come to Hovenweep from further south in Colorado, or from Utah, you can miss most of the dirt roads.

We did see some nice spots of fall color both going and coming over Lizard Head Pass.  However, the vast majority of the Aspen have not yet turned.

We didn’t do much on Friday.  Craig, Jayden, and I did go to Ridgway for breakfast at the Galloping Goose Bakery and Café.  They serve very good food in large quantities.

On Saturday, all of us went to the Galloping Goose for breakfast.  Then we found two geocaches.  Around noon, JJ, Craig, and Jayden left.  They spent the night in Albuquerque before flying back to Dallas on Sunday.  Charolette and I did laundry.  Then we drove to Silverton for supper at the Brown Bear Café.  There is getting to be some fall color along the Million Dollar Highway.  Hopefully it will develop a lot more before we leave in about a week.  We did get to see sunset on the Red Mountains.

Sunday we went to church.  We had lunch at the Subway in Ridgway (the only name brand restaurant within a 35 mile drive of Ouray).  We went to a matinee at the Magic Circle Theater in Montrose.  The acting group is called the Magic Circle Players and they put on six different shows during their season.  Today we saw “Always…Patsy Cline”.  It features two actresses and a five-member band.  One actress plays a friend of Patsy’s who tells things about Patsy.  The other actress sings 24 of Patsy’s songs.  The singer was amazingly good for someone from Western Colorado.  We enjoyed the show.  The steel guitar player and lead guitar player was someone we saw last year at the Bar Z Chuckwagon show.  Afterwards, we made the mandatory stop at Wal-Mart and returned home to loaf.

While JJ, Craig, and Jayden were here, we learned a little about living in small towns like Ouray.  Sunday, a week ago, we were out of milk before everyone had breakfast.  I drove downtown to discover that the grocery store doesn’t open until 9:00.  We had not gotten milk the night before because we got to town after 6:00 and the only grocery store was closed.  There are no convenience stores in Ouray.  Sunday morning I drove 10 miles to Ridgway to get milk at their convenience store (a Conoco station).  This reminds me of being in a small English town on a business trip in 1976.  It was hard to get the things you wanted when you wanted them.  You really get spoiled living a quarter mile from a 24-hour Wal-Mart. 

We went to Ridgway to find some geocaches and to check out some of the locations and things used to film the movie True Grit.  We drove the 15 miles of dirt road to get to Owl Creek Pass.  Just before the pass, we stopped to look at the meadow used in the movie.  Jayden enjoyed running through the meadow.  It was a nice sunny day with temperatures in the upper 50’s and low 60’s.  We checked our thermometer when we got up this morning – it read 40 degrees.  Fall has definitely arrived in the mountains.  We found one cache at the edge of the meadow.

We stopped at Owl Creek Pass to find another cache.  Grandma took Jayden over to Owl Creek to check out the water.  Jayden spent about 45 minutes throwing rocks and sticks in the fast running, clear water.  We pretty much had to drag her away. 

At the pass we could see snow on the second mountain range to the east.  We had seen them yesterday while on the high ground above Ridgway on our way back from Telluride.  We drove on a few miles to find the next cache and got some great views of the snow-covered mountains.  We successfully found the third cache.  We parked the Jeep where the road got very rocky and walked the last eighth of a mile to the cache.  When JJ picked up the stick covering the cache, a mouse ran over her hand.  Both JJ and the mouse had their excitement for the day right there.  JJ screamed louder, but the mouse ran away faster.

While JJ, Craig, and I were finding the geocache, Grandma and Jayden were feeding Pringles to the Gray Jays.  When we got back, we watched and took some pictures.  The Jays would get within two feet of Jayden to pick up the chips.  There were two pairs of Gray Jays, but one pair wanted all the chips and chased off the second pair.  All of us had a good time watching the Jays.  They put on a good show, trying to get as many pieces of chips in their mouths at once time as they possibly can.

We returned to Ridgway to eat lunch at the True Grit Café.  Craig and I had their special – pot roast with gravy on a hoagie bun with potato salad.  It was delicious and there must have been a pound of roast beef.  I couldn’t eat it all, which is a very rare happening.  We had a very friendly and colorful waitress.  After lunch we looked briefly around the town at various parts used in the movie.

We returned home in time to go to the library to use the internet.  After that, we relaxed for the rest of the day.

Monday we packed a picnic lunch and went to Yankee Boy Basin.  The Basin was crowded.  We passed a lot of vehicles going both ways.  We walked to the base of Twin Falls to eat our picnic lunch.  There was an old mining building at the base of the falls that has collapsed.  We couldn’t decide whether a miner used to live there or if this was part of mine operations.  We ate our lunch under a bright, mostly sunny sky.  We did have to wear light jackets because it was cool.  Afterwards, we returned to town to do laundry and internet.

Tuesday we packed another picnic lunch and took off to drive the Unaweep-Tabeguache (the gu is pronounced like wa) scenic highway.  We droved past several prairie dog villages.  Then we drove through about 50 miles of canyons formed by the San Miguel and Dolores Rivers.  You go past about every kind of rock formations possible during the drive.  You start off in rock formations from the Cretaceous Period (135 million years old) and go through Jurassic, Triassic, and Permian (280 million years old) during the course of the 50 miles.  You can see the original layers getting higher and higher above you as you follow the rivers downstream.  Most of the Colorado schools send there geology and archeology majors out here a lot to do hands-on learning.  The different layers are different colors and different hardness’s.  The combinations produce some strange formations.  At one point near the end, the canyon is not much wider than the river but very high.  The river and the road do a lot of gooseneck bends at this point.  Some of the creeks coming in have major canyons of their own.  It’s a fascinating drive.  We stopped at one point to view an old water flume that was built for five miles hanging on a sheer cliff above the river.  It was made of wood and was built over 100 years ago.  Only pieces of it remain.  It took water to a mine that was closed after only three years.  We ate our lunch at a picnic table provided by the Nature Conservancy at its San Miguel Preserve.

We also stopped at a new attraction in the town of Gateway, Colorado.  It is called Gateway Canyons Resort and is being built by the owner of the Discovery Channel.  He has finished a small motel, grocery store (hours 4:30 am to 9:00 pm), and trendy restaurant.  A large building to house an antique car collection is almost complete.  They will also build cabins surrounding a swimming pool, a big spa area, horse stables, and several other things.  Everything has a southwest/Mexican style of architecture with colors similar to the nearby canyons.  I suspect you may get to see advertisements for the place on the Discovery Channel.  It is a big investment in the middle of nowhere.  Gateway looks to have just a few hundred people.  Gateway is at a wide spot near the end of the canyon we were driving in.  I’m curious as to what he thinks will actually attract people to his place.  It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. 

We returned through Delta and Montrose, stopping to eat at Fiesta Guadalajara in Montrose, and stopping to shop at Wal-Mart.  It’s been a while since we’ve been near a Wal-Mart.

We didn’t do much on Friday.  JJ, Craig, and Jayden left Dallas in the morning and flew into Albuquerque.  From there they drove a rental car to our location.  They arrived about 6:45 pm. 

Saturday we explored Ouray.  We went to the Amphitheater (a formation, not a place to sit) in the morning to see the city from up high and to find a geocache.  We went to Cascade Falls.  We had lunch and then returned to the RV to let Jayden take a nap.  In the late afternoon we went to Box Canyon.  This is a narrow slot canyon with a waterfall that is a city park.  The waterfall is about 200 feet high.  You take a bridge built through the canyon above the creek to get to the waterfall.  It is a metal grate bridge (you can see the water and rocks below you through the bridge).  Then we took the trail to the top of the canyon.  You go up about 100 feet using stairs, then you go up another 100 feet on the rockiest trail I’ve ever been on.  There you can walk out on a bridge over the canyon looking 200 feet down to see the bridge through the canyon where we had been.  Three-year old Jayden walked the whole way herself.

Sunday we went to Silverton.  On the way, we took the 6-mile long 4-wheel drive road where Charolette and I had seen the sheep.  We saw only one sheep this time, a dead one.  It was lying beside the road with fluffs of wool scattered all over.  We’re not sure that it had a head, but we didn’t examine it too closely.  We stopped along the road to let Jayden climb a rock and pick some flowers.  She didn’t seem to be bothered by the 12,000 feet altitude. It was a bright sunny day, but the temperature up there was probably below 60.  We had great views in all directions. 

I had mentioned in an earlier journal entry that I had run out of words to describe the views we see.  My smart-alecky daughter presented me with a travel thesaurus when she arrived.  Unfortunately, I have not yet had time to look up any new adjectives.

After the detour over the mountains, we arrived at Silverton and ate at the Brown Bear Café.  We dropped Charolette at a quilt show while the rest of us went and watched the Durango-Silverton trains do their turnaround thing.  The first train to arrive in town had backed up a few blocks onto a “Y” siding after dropping off its passengers for a 2-1/2 hour visit to Silverton.  The second train arrived about an 90 minutes later.  The first train pulls out of the Y heading back to Durango.  It stays there while the second train backs onto the Y siding (after first unloading its passengers).  Then the first train backs into town to load its passengers.  It is now facing towards Durango for the trip back.  After the first train leaves, the second train pulls out of the Y facing Durango and then backs into town to load its passengers.  Jayden picked up a few pieces of coal along the track as souvenirs.

After watching most of the train switch, we found another geocache on a road going up Kendall Mountain.  From up on the mountain, we watched the first train leave to go back to Durango.  Then we saw the second train back into town. 

We went out of town to the north on a county road.  We eventually ended up on a 4-wheel drive road that took us to Hurricane Pass where Charolette and I had been a few days ago.  It was cold up there at 12,407 feet with a strong wind blowing.  The view was still good.

We returned to Silverton and found two more geocaches.  We ran into another family geocaching.  Then we returned to Ouray and had pizza for supper.

It has rained some almost every day for the last 8 days.  We stay clear of 4-wheel drive roads when they are wet.  We took a walk each day and a bike road most days.  On Sunday after church we went to Montrose to eat and shop.  I spent most of the day sitting under my awning working Sudoku puzzles, reading, and watching birds get peanuts.

Monday we went to a parade in Ridgway.  It was about what you would expect for a city of 1,000 holding a parade in conjunction with their Labor Day weekend rodeo – mostly horses.  There was a group of five girls learning how to use batons.  One flatbed truck had six girls tap dancing.  The last thing in the parade was two fire trucks with large nozzles mounted on top.  The firemen on the two trucks were having a water fight with each other.  The net result was a lot of wet parade watchers.  We saw it coming and got far enough away to stay dry.  We went to the town square park after the parade to watch some of the entertainment, including the family singers that had sung in our church service on Sunday.  They were from Longmont, Colorado.  We didn’t stay for the whole thing because it started raining.  Incidentally, the town square was the location where the hanging scene took place in the movie True Grit.  They have a dozen or more huge cottonwood trees in the park.  You can see them in the movie.

Tuesday, we just stayed around the trailer relaxing and watching birds in between walks and bike rides.

Wednesday we took our bikes to Ridgway to ride on their paved bike trail that follows the Uncompahgre River.  It’s a very nice path.  It crossed the river on an old iron railroad bridge.  It goes for several miles.  We rode for about 45 minutes.  Then we went back and relaxed at the RV.

Thursday we went to Telluride.  We rode the three free gondola rides that are used to get you between Telluride and Mountain Village.  We also rode the free shuttle that takes you all over Telluride.  They offer all these free rides for environmental purposes and to cut back on traffic in a town (Telluride) that has almost no room for cars.  We ate lunch at an interesting restaurant in Mountain Village near the gondola station.  We went to a presentation on Black Swifts (birds) at the Telluride Library.  The library was awesome.  It had two wireless internet networks plus about 20 PCs to use for internet.  It covered three levels.  The large brick building was only a few years old.  Anyway the Black Swift presentation was given by a full-time employee of the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory.  We were supposed to go to a local waterfall after the presentation (and after supper) to see some Black Swifts, but it was raining hard so the field trip got canceled.  We will try to catch the swifts in Box Canyon here in Ouray. 

I finally succeeded in working one of the most difficult Sudoku puzzles in the book I bought (featuring puzzles from the New York Times).  There are four levels of puzzles in the book.  I have now worked at least one puzzle at each level.  The hardest one took me five hours to work yesterday.  If you haven’t worked a Sudoku puzzle, search for them on the internet.  There are a couple websites that have them.  I see a guy working them regularly at the Ouray Library.  The easy ones only take about 10 minutes.

We’ve taken it very easy the last three days.  With the exception of a ten-mile drive to Ridgway on Friday to eat lunch at the True Grit Café, we haven’t left Ouray.  We’ve spent almost all of our time at our RV.  We took a 30-minute walk each morning and a bike ride on Friday afternoon.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time the last three weeks watching the local birds eat the peanuts I put out.  We have three kinds of birds that come to take the peanuts off the top of the wooden fence behind our RV – Steller’s Jays, Magpies, and Crows.  They each have their own characteristics.  The Steller’s Jays usually work in pairs.  They will land and then pick up and set down several peanuts before they find the one they want.  I’ve noticed they typically reject the peanuts with only one peanut inside or a peanut that seems light in weight.  Once they find a peanut they like, then they fly off into the trees on the mountain immediately behind us to hide the peanut.  They do this as fast as possible while their mate is getting a peanut.  Each Jay returns as fast as possible to get another peanut.  When two pairs of Jays are working the peanuts, they scream at each other and try to chase away a Jay from the other pair.  In the end, each pair gets its share of the peanuts.  The Jays hop along the top of the fence to get to the peanuts.

Magpies walk along the top of the fence, but they look clumsy.  They frequently knock peanuts off the fence.  They keep picking up peanuts until they can finally get two peanuts to stay in their beak at the same time.  Then they fly off to hide them but sometimes they just go off and eat them.  They are larger than the Jays, but they tend to not land on the fence when a Jay is there.  When they try to eat the peanut, they hold if with one foot and hit it with their beak.  I often wonder how often they hit one of their toes.  They look very clumsy doing that.

Crows just eat each peanut they get, sometimes they try to eat them on the fence top and sometimes they fly off to eat the peanut.  The Crows get very few peanuts out of each batch.  I estimate the Jays get 80%, the Magpies get 15%, and the Crows get 5%.

The birds apparently have learned to keep an eye on the fence top.  When I first started this three weeks ago, it sometimes took them 5 or 6 hours before they showed up to get the peanuts.  Now it seldom takes longer than 15 or 20 minutes.

We also got one new bird for our life lists – Brewer’s Sparrow.  I was trying for three weeks to identify the sparrow-like birds that eat off the ground around the RV park.  I finally got some good, long, close looks at them.  Our bird books basically describe them as being a bird with very few distinctive features.  That’s correct.  That made them very difficult to pin down.

The RV Park is about 80% full.  As I recall, last year it was essentially full on Labor Day weekend.  I don’t know for sure, but I suspect gas prices have had some impact this year.  I filled up on Friday.  It cost $3.299 for the middle grade.  That’s a new record high price for me.  We’ve been watching the news about Louisiana and Mississippi and the effects of the hurricane.  I feel sorry for the people, but I’ve always thought that New Orleans would flood someday ever since my first visit there.  They were totally dependent on 24 pumping stations to pump out any water that was in the city, including their own processed sewer.  The Mississippi River and Lake Ponchartrain both are higher than most of the ground in New Orleans.  Personally, I don’t think most of the city should be rebuilt if it is still going to be below water level (especially not with my tax dollars).  We did donate online to the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and the United Methodist Committee on Relief.

Today didn’t go as planned.  We got up intending to do laundry first thing, then a short drive, and then some relaxing.  The laundry was full at 8:30, so we decided to go for a long drive.  We did three four-wheel drive trails; Corkscrew Gulch, Hurricane Pass, and California Gulch which took us over two passes above 12,000 feet – Hurricane Pass and California Pass.  It took about 5-1/2 hours including a stop for a picnic lunch.  We got to go right through the Red Mountains, in particular parallel to Red Mountain #1 in the valley at its base.  It was very slow going for about 15 miles of the route.  We did one hairpin turn that went up as steep as any road I have driven.  Then we went through a second hairpin that went up just as steep.  I had already decided that this was as steep as I ever wanted to drive, but that thought only lasted a couple miles because we went up one even steeper.  I was concerned whether I had started fast enough to make it without spinning the wheels, but we did make it without any problem.  As I watched the pickup in front of me make the hairpin turn and start up the hill, I swore that he was going up at a 45 degree angle.  This had to be an optical illusion, because I don’t think a vehicle can climb 45 degrees on a gravel/dirt/rock road.  Whatever it was, it was dang steep.  It didn’t help that the hairpin was so sharp that I had to backup to finish making the turn.  This was the first time I’ve had to do that in my Jeep.  I did it a lot with my F250 and with some other 4-wheel drive vehicles I have rented in the past (especially a Suburban we rented one year to take over the two highest passes in Colorado as well as about 20 other passes – a vacation where we stayed in Crested Butte but tried to tackle as many 4-wheel drive roads as we could in a week).

We stopped for lunch at Hurricane Pass (elevation 12,409 feet) with views of dozens of mountains and a nice blue lake a couple thousand feet straight down below us.  We talked with a guy that arrived by bicycle about the same time as us.  He had started in Silverton, about 14 miles away.  He lives in Glenwood Springs, but spends a lot of time biking or hiking to every high place in Colorado.  He had me take a picture of him and his bike.  He took off for California Pass while we ate.  We met him again at California Pass (12,930 feet).  I took another picture for him.  He took a picture for us.  We all walked up to the top of the small peak near the pass.  That put us close to 13,000 feet.  The views were spectacular, not only at this pass, but for 95% of our drive.  It was on the way to California Pass where we hit the steep stretch of road I mentioned earlier.

We had a good 15 minute talk with the biker before he took off again.  We drove on down to the lowlands (9,800 feet) at Animas Forks and on to Silverton (9,200 feet) where we took the Million Dollar Highway back to Ouray (7,800 feet).  After several days of four-wheel driving, the Million Dollar Highway seems like an interstate.  The slowest speed on it is about 12 or 13 miles per hour in a couple of the hairpins (with 10 mph advisories speeds posted).  For much of our four-wheel drive we were going as slow as one mile per hour up to five miles per hour.  You have to go pretty slow to keep from scraping the skidplates on the vehicle.  When you go fast, the vehicle bounces, because of how rough the road is, and comes down on the skidplates.  On the rough four-wheel drive roads, I’m always in four-wheel low in the transfer case.  Top speed is about 25 miles per hour with the transmission in drive.  It is really geared down.  At 25 mph, the transmission is turning as fast as if we were driving 100 miles per hour in two-wheel drive.  Sometimes I wish it were geared down even more.  The roads are just as steep going down as they are going up.  You learn to really appreciate low gearing.

After our drive, I went to the library to do internet.  Then we did laundry.  Finally we took a bike ride for a couple miles.  We had a well-rounded day.