After the Wonnells left on Friday morning, Kate and I hopped in the car and made the trek to western Colorado for some exploring. We ended up spending two nights at the historic Strater Hotel in Durango, riding a restored steam powered train through the mountains and exploring well preserved cliff dwellings dating back to the 1100s.

First thing Saturday morning we were able to snag a couple of the last tickets for the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad.

We rode on the open air car which offered some great views of the passing mountain scenery.

The all-day train ride took us from Durango to Silverton, a small mountain town that has a great “Old West” feel. Above is Kate standing in front of the oldest bordello in Silverton.

Riding the train was a last minute idea, and we’re very glad we jumped aboard. If you’re in the neighborhood and can swing the tickets, then we recommend it.

See more pictures from the tracks.

Sunday was history day for us. We left Durango and headed west for Mesa Verde, home of a host of cliff-dwellings tucked into canyon walls in Colorado’s western high desert.

It’s amazing to think of how old these dwellings are, and how good of a shape they’re in. Pueblo Indians were building these multi-story building in the side of shear cliffs around the same time that Henry V was building castles over in England. You expect to find buildings 800 years old in Europe, not necessarily here in America.

And these Ancestral Puebloans were a crazy folk. Some of these dwellings were insanely high and rather difficult to get to even with crude stairs and tall ladders… back then, the only way to get to most of these mountain condos was to literally scale the side of a cliff using only small toe and foot holds carved into the rock face.

After exploring several of the dwellings, Kate and I took a great little hike along the canyon wall to see some petroglyphs.

There are many more photos of Mesa Verde here.

We ended up taking the long way home and headed north to Montrose, and through our now favorite stretch of road: 550 from Durango to Ouray.

Western Colorado is now on our list of places to go back and explore some more. (anyone up for skiing Telluride?)

Our friends Rob and Sarah came out to visit us for a week and Kate and I took them on their first backpacking trip to the Maroon Bells outside of Aspen. The weather wasn’t the best and we had some slight food issues, but overall it was a good trip.

On the way to Aspen we took them over Mosquito Pass which was also another fun adventure for them. No broken shocks this time on the ole’ 4Runner, so that’s good.

After roughing it for a night, the four of us headed to Boulder for a few days of shopping and eating. Oh, and during a detour to Fort Collins, Rob and I took a tour of the New Belgium Brewery (makers of the popular Fat Tire amber ale)… which turned out to be a very interesting tour. So if you ever find yourself in Fort Collins…

See more of our photos here.

Yesterday we went on a long Sunday drive after church. We started by traveling to Leadville and driving around Turquoise Lake, then ended up heading over Mosquito Pass, a rocky, unpaved road that goes from Leadville to Alma. It turns out that this road is actually the highest in the US (a through road that is) topping out at 13,185 ft.

Kate and I had the day off on Thursday, so we took a hike to Torreys and Grays, two 14ers side by side and separated by a short saddle.

Here you can see Grays on the left and Torreys on the right. It’s an optical illusion from this angle, but Grays is actually the taller of the two by 3 feet.

Kate hiking up Grays. You can just see the trail in the valley that we hiked up.

Us at the top of Grays before we head off to Torreys.

Kate didn’t have fun going down the snowy ridge of Grays.

In the saddle.

The top of Torreys.

A nice pano from the top of Torreys. (easy to make using hugin)

View more pictures from the hike.

That’s Rocky Mountain National Park. Our plan was to take a drive through the park then onto Estes, but mother nature had a different plan.

We woke up Saturday morning to a nice little blizzard… in the middle of AUGUST!!! By late morning the little snow we got was starting to melt and we were on our way to RoMo, but when we got there, the Trail Ridge Road was closed due to snow!! (The Trail Ridge Road is one of the highest paved roads in the world, and the only road connecting the west side of the park to the east.)

So we made due and went on a little hike and got a chance to see some great wildlife including 3 moose (one bull and two cows).

(this is a view of Quandary as we left in the morning)

This ended up being just a short scouting trip. Our friends from KS, the Wonnells are coming to visit us the first week of Sept, so we’ll have more time to explore the park (and do some camping).