Fairmont Franz Klammer Lodge Telluride

... Junction Creek. It's so amazing that a campground in such a prime location (about 4 miles out of Durango) is always half-empty. After setting up our tent and eating and drinking our spoils from the farmers market, we drove into the mountains to Silverton and the trailhead. A few times during the morning, Allison reminded me that it was her birthday weekend, usually in order to get her way. I asked her if she was gonna be a ...

... of hiking and sight seeing throughout the town, and ate and drank the way a group our size and age would be expected to.<br><br>Sorry I don't have more pics of the group, I was mesmerized by the scenery!<br><br>Maybe when I get together with them next I'll have some to add.<br><br>Hope all are well!

<br><br>Durango &#8211; Ouray &#8211; Montrose &#8211;<br>Gunnison<br><br>By far mums favourite day on the road.<br>As we drove north through the San Juan National Forest we saw some of<br>the prettiest scenery ever. Huge mountais surrounded us as we drove<br>over narrow passes to be greeted by more beautiful scenes. We then<br>found Ouray (pronounced you-ray). It is a town named after Native<br>American (Indian) Chief Ouray who was a peacemaker. It is also the<br>site of ...

Within a couple weeks of moving to Monticello, we had already located a couple demolition derbies that were going to be held at fairs near here. The first one was in Cortez at the Montezuma County fair and last weekend was FINALLY the time! Since it didn't start until the evening and we were planning on hiking near Telluride on Sunday, we decided that we were going to camp near Dolores that night to save about 2 hours of driving. So we took ...

... view of mountains in 3 directions. Ethan, Connie and Wade drove up to Yankee Boy Basin (4 wheel drive mountain pass) while Antoinette and Amanda relaxed at the hotel. Nice side trip. Would love to go back and check out some of the other mine sites and tunnels. More pics to come later.

... to check if anyone might be leaving that day- the man working there told me that there was one of the primitive sites (the only real difference at these sites was that you can't drive your car right to them, but there was a place for people camping at those sites to park that was really close by) that was supposed to be opening up, but that he couldn't give it to me until the people were actually gone.  Check-out time was at 11:00 and even though they normally don't take ...

... bolt or come back the next day. We planned on coming back the next day, but didn&#8217;t make it. We chose to sleep in our car again as the ground was pretty muddy and we thought it might rain again. This time sleeping in the car was miserable. Neither one of us slept well at all. Darren ended up driving at 4:30am. We decided to head back to Firestone where Darren&#8217;s parents live.

... while we were in Silverton, and the sun came out to welcome us. We caught the bus back along another scenic route, which tended to go much higher than the railroad. We were entertained the whole way by a pleasant, chatty and very informative bus driver. He kept pointing out things like gliders in the air being towed by small planes, and we kept hoping he wouldn't drive off the ...

An overnight stop in Durango (a very cool town, which we would have liked to explore more of) and on to Silverton and Ouray (Victorian, mining towns), gave us a chance to slow down and adjust to the higher altitude of Colorado's San Juan Mountains. The winding mountain roads exposed alpine valleys, snow melt pour-offs, and the ...

... t hit the ground once. We had lunch at a small mountain lodge where they played live music and we even sat next to a family who we met in Phoenix and shared the same late night experience as us. It took us "low-elavation" folk a while to get used to the higher altitude. This morning, Michaela splurged the sunscreen all over the kitchen floor, and my yogurt exploded all over my chest at ...