Day 4 Durango

After Vail, we headed towards Durango, where our friend Tom lives. HOLY COW, what a ride there!!! Weather was great, the towns and scenery were awesome, but the roads…wow!! Up and down, turn around, zig, and then zag, all while being like a foot from the edge of the mountain, where you could plummet to your death if you sneezed. Well, not really if I sneezed, because I wasn’t driving. But, if Scott had sneezed, well then….we may not be here today! Ryan is NOT a fan of being high up in the mountains, with steep terrain next to the road. He was afraid we would go off the cliff and die. He was happy when our road hugged the side of the mountain, and we were in the outside lane. “There isn’t even a guard rail!”, he would say. 

Amaya kept her head out the window, as if she were a dog trying to eat the air, and kept ohhing, ahhing, and squealing with delight around every corner. I swear, when we went around one mountain, there was a completely different color to the rock, different texture, and even terrain. It was awesome! We also saw a ton of deer on the drive. We looked for mountain goats, bison, and prairie dogs, but didn’t see any.

Kids, what did you like about the ride down to Tom’s?

Ryan: “I liked the hills and the tunnels”

Jake: “The mountains, going up and down them, and how they looked”

Ryan says, “that freaked me out”.
Amaya: “The cliffs were so tall, and all the deer that we saw. I also saw a mountain lion”.

 

Scared Ryan

We stopped along the road at a scenic stop. It was right next to the river, at the base of a mountain. The kids all enjoyed playing at the base of the river, checking out the stones, and Amaya could NOT stop smiling and telling me how much she loved it. The boys attempted skipping stones, which doesn’t really work in a raging river. Each picked a favorite rock to add to the rocks around our pool house, but Ryan had a hard time picking out one worthy enough. When we first stopped, there was a really cool blue bird. I have no idea what it was, but it kept a very close watch on us when Jake was climbing a tree.

Another stop we made was after coming through a tunnel, which had a waterfall flowing over it, and down to the river below. There was snow all around, and down at the river below, there was a large opening in the snow over the river, revealing the flowing water. The now on that part had to be four feet tall, but you can’t tell from the picture. The kids tried throwing stones into the open part of the river. The water coming from the waterfall was freezing!!