We decided to leave our cabin a day early to cut the drive home in half. Our original plan was to drive to Glenwood Springs, via the "scenic route". Then, we were going to stay in a hotel and make the final 4 hour drive on Saturday. It turned out that our Hotel no longer had a room for us when we showed up at 9:30pm that night. So, we put the kids in their pajamas and made the trip home that night, arriving home at around 1:30am. It was long, but we were glad to be home. Although the drive was long, it was REALLY pretty and we made a couple of stops along the way to enjoy the trip.
The best-friend sisters embracing at Vallecito Lake. They really enjoyed each other on this trip (much to their parent's pleasure!)
A quick little family photo before leaving the lake.
After a beautiful drive from Durango to Silverton, CO, we finally arrived. This is the view coming into Silverton. What a beautiful little mining town. It is mostly unchanged and is very charming. They have an annual bike race from Durango to Silverton, called the "Iron Horse" race. The bikers start in Durango at the same time the train does and they all "race" to Silverton. The bikers typically beat the train by over an hour, but it's still fun. There is a huge elevation difference and the race actually looks VERY tough. Jason would like to do it one year.
Here's a look at downtown Silverton.
Here's a look at the Gold mine tour that we tried to take, but couldn't because of an electrical problem in the mine. We did enjoy the drive to the mine. The scenery was awesome.
Here's a look at the "Iron Horse" train as it was parked in Silverton.
Here's the family in the back of the car. (Jantzen is seated behind Alyssa, but is sleeping).
Definitely our favorite mountain town in Colorado (with pretty much only ONE thing to do) is Ouray, Colorado. The town sits at ~8000 ft and is nestled in the middle of mountains that are around 13000 ft high. It was AMAZING and made us all feel really small. The drive into town from Silverton, CO was on the "Million Dollar Highway". I would have posted some photos from this part of the drive (which was INCREDIBLE) but Amy was so freaked out by the heights that she couldn't even look out the window, much less take a picture. I was also forbidden to take any pictures since I had to keep BOTH hands on the wheel! (Dad really enjoyed scaring Mom on this drive!)
As we drove through the small town of Ouray, we discovered the one thing to do in town and we spontaneously stopped and participated in this incredible experience. They had a HUGE hot-springs pool, with water at 97 degrees. We had to rent towels and it wasn't really cheap, but we enjoyed the experience. Aubrey and Jantzen loved the "huge hot tub".
Ashtyn and Alyssa enjoyed looking under water with their goggles as they swam around the hot springs pool.
Dad and Aubrey enjoyed sitting under the hot springs waterfall. Aubrey loves water!
The girls pretended to be "water-horses" and pulled Dad and Jantzen on our big tube that we rented. Jantzen could have been pulled by the "water-horses" forever! It was fun the listen to a huge group of people from France who were touring the US on Harley's. I've never met "Biker-Frenchies" before. It was interesting.
After the hot-springs, we ate dinner at a little deli in town. They served up a great salad and fried chicken. Plus, we had milk shakes on the way out.
After dinner, little Aubrey spent about 10 minutes playing on the railing at the restaurant. She was really cute the whole trip long.
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