KOA Ouray Campground, Ouray, Colorado. Tachometer – 2480 miles
Click here for Pictures
We woke up to a clear and bright morning and the sun started melting away the little snow that had accumulated on our RV. We headed back to Mesa Verde for a second attempt and today was much more successful. We booked a ranger led tour of “Cliff Palace†which is one of the dwellings from ~1280. To get there we had to walk down some steep stairs and climb up a 3 meter ladder. Paola had Shir in a backpack carrier and I took Orr on my hands. Ron was totally independent. The tour was very short in distance, only 500 meters, but with the ranger explaining things it took one hour. The kids got restless very quickly and we had to keep them busy and quiet for the sake of the rest of the group.
At noon, I took Ron on an additional one hour tour of “Balcony Houseâ€. Why did he agree to suffer through another hour of boring explanations? The tour included climbing up a 10 meter ladder, several 5 meter ladders and crawling through a tunnel. The tour guide was also much better, but that was an issue relevant only to me.
After the tour we got back to Paola and the girls in the RV and drove out of the park. In all the ancient dwellings were very nice, but when you think of the amazing castles religious buildings and government edifices being built at the same time in Europe or Asia, you realize how far behind the Native Americans were compared to the old world.
After leaving the park we started on our trek northeast bound towards the Rocky Mountains. It will take us a few days to get there. Our first stop after filling up the gas tank ($150 for 40 gallons, mamamia) was La Plata Canyon. The only reason we drove up there was for a photo-op for Paola, who was born in La Plata (Argentina). Nonetheless, it was a very pretty drive with Snowcapped mountains (La Plata mountains) towering above us. The town itself, if it could be called that used to be a mining town 150 years ago; now there are maybe 10 houses there.
We continued eastward on highway 160 towards Durango, the largest city in the area. To our left was the San Juan mountain range, snowcapped and beautiful. In Durango we did some grocery shopping and then continued driving northward on 550. It is a beautiful road going through the mountains, climbing up to several passes at almost 11,000 feet. We stopped at Molas Pass and had supper with a great view.
From there we continued for another hour, passing by Silverton, a historic pioneering and mining town and a 35 mile “Gold Highway†drive to Ouray, another former mining town and now tourist attraction. The road was very beautiful and the late afternoon light shone brilliantly on the wet and colorful rocks towering above the road. Every few minutes we could see another ad-hoc waterfall created by the spring melt.
The campground here seems nice but since we arrived late, we’ll just go to sleep.
Good night,
-Hemi
This entry was posted on Friday, May 25th, 2007 at 11:01 pm and is filed under Big Trip, Colorado, North America RV 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.