DURANGO, COLORADO

We got to Durango and met up with Mr. W's brother and sis-in-law, DWW and Barb.  We are staying at a place named Alpen Rose.  Someone had told DWW that this was a good place to stay.  Is there a bad place to stay in Durango?  It is a nice RV park.  When Mr. W had read the reviews, several people had said that when it rained there was standing water in some of the campsites.  Sure enough, when DWW got here, the site he was suppose to be in had standing water.  They were nice enough to move us to other sites together. We are paying their weekly rate for a 50 amp site in prime season and it $282.00.  Nothing is cheap in Colorado this time of year. All of the sites and roads are gravel.  There are lots of trees and some of the sites have good views of the mountains, some don't. We are in a pull-thru site.  They have a big dog park.  They have a pool, laundry room, a store, and nice restrooms and showers.  As a matter of fact, Mr. W said that this shower was beginning to move up to #1 best shower of all on his list.  They also make pizzas and will deliver to your RV and they have a chuckwagon breakfast each morning that is an all you can eat for $8.00 pp.

On our first full day here, we decided to drive to Ouray, Co., via Red Mountain pass.  It was suppose to be cloudy and rainy and sure enough, it was.  There is still a lot of snow on the mountains and as we got higher and higher, snow was everywhere.  It also was getting colder and colder.  I wasn't sure how my pictures were going to turn out with it being so cloudy.  But, they did. 

On our way to Ouray, we had to stop at every pull-off and drive to every lake or park or anything else with a sign on the road.  We would get out and take pictures and look around where we could.  Sometimes it was either slightly raining or would begin raining while we were out taking pictures and we would do the hop out/hop in thing.

We had packed a picnic lunch in hopes that we could find a beautiful spot on top of a mountain and eat lunch.  With the rain, we ended up eating lunch in the truck at a little historical pull-off spot in Silverton.

This is a hot springs.  It formed this with all the minerals in the water.

 

This is called Red Mountain Pass.  I wonder why?

All the aspen trees and the "Christmas" trees as I call them are so pretty.

DWW and Barb by one of the waterfalls/rushing streams

A waterfall with a rainbow

When we got to Ouray, there was a sign for a place called Box Canyon Falls.  You had to drive down a one-way road to get there and you had to pay to get in.  DWW bought everyone's ticket to get in.  Thank you DWW!  At first, I was thinking why are we paying to get in this place and see this falls when we've seen several waterfalls for free.  But after we went in, I was glad we did. 

You walked on a 500 ft. trail that went over a metal suspension bridge built into the side of the mountain until you got inside a mix of rugged crags and smoothly eroded rock.  This was not a slow, long waterfall, but one that had a massive amount of water rushing eighty feet to the canyon's bottom. It was pretty amazing.  You could actually walk down stairs and stand right by the water.  The guy who sold the tickets said to be careful because if you fell in the water, they would not be able to get you out til you got to the Ranger's station which evidently, was a long way down river.  They used this place for mining many years ago and when they quit, they left some of their mining equipment there and it still remains there.

See the old mining equipment being hit by the sunlight?

When we bought our tickets, the man told DWW that there was also a trail that was 1/2 mile and had a 200 ft. elevation that would take us to other views of the falls and canyon.  DWW told him that we would not be doing that.  Guess what we did?  It also had a tunnel through the mountain you had to walk through.  On the other side of the tunnel was a cable walkway and if you kept going, this trail eventually led you out into another area of the town.  The trail was pretty steep and rocky and Barb has had a hip replacement and so it made me a little nervous for her.  But, she did great. 

Looking at the town of Ouray below

The tunnel you walk through.

Mr. W on the cable walk way.

I had left ribs cooking in the crock-pot and because we had stopped so many times on the way there, it had taken longer to get there than I thought it would.  We didn't want overcooked ribs so we decided we better head back.  I think we only stopped 2 or 3 times on the way back.  But, the ribs were delish!

A couple of birds at the entrance