Colorado In Review

Whoa... look at all that color!

Continuing our travels from Utah with Martin & Deb Cernech, we concluded our 4th day together by driving 1 1/2 hours from Four Corners to Mesa Verde National Park... Our 4th national park in 4 days!!!

Pueblo Indians made this area home from approximately A.D. 600-1300.  The park now protects over 600 cliff dwellings!  Many are hidden in the canyon pictured below, unseen until zoomed in...

Notice one dwelling in the center of the photo?

We decided to tour the largest of the dwellings here- Cliff Palace.  The walk down was steep and included narrow passages and ladders!

Cliff Palace was huge- containing 150 rooms, plus an additional 75 open areas!  At any one time, 100-120 Puebloans would have lived here.

Young children spent their first few years strapped to a board on their mothers backs... Imagine raising your curious, rambunctious toddler on a cliff!  The Puebloans relied on rainwater and would have communities above the cliffs for growing crops like corn and squash.  

There were over 20 structures like this throughout the Palace, called kivas.  These sunken rooms were used for religious ceremonies- like small group gatherings:)

We would have loved to have explored more cliff dwellings in this area, but we were on a mission and had to continue on!  Next stop was Telluride and the landscape change along the drive was simply breathtaking.

This was a such a fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants kind of week, making reservations for hotels as we drove up to our next destination and we totally scored with our find in Telluride.  Camel's Garden was an inexpensive, chic boutique hotel right at the base of the gondola and within a short walk to the quaint ski town… we loved it!

Our favorite food finds here were Brown Dog for amazing pizza and The Sweet Life for yummy ice cream combinations like Maple Bacon & Coconut Almond Chip. 

Along with exploring the ski town, we enjoyed relaxing in our hot tub at the base of the mountain, playing cards with Martin & Deb, and taking the gondola to Telluride's "upper" shopping area.

But the highlight of this destination was the Hot Air Balloon Festival that took place during our stay! We woke at 5:30am to walk to the edge of town where we watched the teams unload and air up their balloons.  What a sight against the gorgeous, mountainous backdrop!   

Our adventurous week with Martin & Deb had sadly come to an end.  We drove to Breckenridge with them, spent the afternoon shopping in town, and then saw them off the next morning to catch their flight back to KC.  By the end of their week with us they had put over 1,550 miles on their rental car!  How sad we were to have them go:(

Absolutely exhausted from our non-stop week (not to mention our non-stop year!!), we decided the 4 of us would stay put in Breck (one of our favorite CO towns) for a few days.  The bummer with visiting the first week of June (apparently called the "Mud Season") was that many things weren't open for another couple of weeks… like Peak 8.  The bonuses though, were small crowds and many 2-for-1 specials at the nicer restaurants… we took advantage of Michaels (for Italian), Briar Rose (for escargot, elk medallions & elk, deer, & rabbit sausage), and Hearthstone (for asparagus soup & elk tenderloins).  

We still managed to find plenty to do: shopping in town, bike riding along the river toward Frisco, bowling, and games of progressive rummy in our room:) 

Alayna's 12th birthday landed on our time in Breck, so we celebrated with biscuits & gravy at Columbine Cafe, pedicures with sugar scrub & paraffin wax dip, a carriage ride through town, and birthday cupcakes from the bakery:)

Our final day in Breck was spent catching up on work:  Jim buried himself in the business, the girls worked on home school research papers, Natalie finished her last chapter in Algebra (woo-hooo!), I blogged (with sketchy internet am now FIVE states behind!) and researched Estes, reserved an RV park in Yellowstone, and booked our flights to Alaska!  Productive day!
Next was our 2 1/2 hour drive to Estes Park, which we had never before visited.  We were lucky enough to catch the 2-day Wool Market event held here every June.  It is the largest fiber fest in the west, bringing in over 10,000 visitors!  All kinds of wool-bearing animals were on display as well as beautiful hand-crafted wool items for sale; skill competitions & performances in the arena; shearing, spinning, and weaving demos to watch…
With two avid knitters in our foursome, we left dreaming of the wool-bearing animals we'd love having on our land someday!  

Alpacas

Long Wool Sheep

Sheared Llamas

Angora Rabbit

Angora Goat… we SO want these!

Watching the start of a wildfire in the distance that started that morning, eventually spreading over 8,000 acres

Sheep shearing demo!

Thinking I could totally do this myself… at least to the much smaller Angora Goats:)

After the Wool Market, we took a 50 mile drive through Rocky Mountain National Park on Trail Ridge Road to Grand Lake, stopping for beautiful views along the way.  The beginning of our drive included a steep elevation climb making us all a bit woozy and dropping our temps from 80* to 50*!  Lots of sharp switchbacks, steep drop-offs, and several no-guardrail turns put ME behind the wheel instead of Jim:)

A good view of the Mountain Pine Beetle destruction

Elk!

Forest Canyon Overlook

Hiking the Colorado River Trail

An 1800's cabin (once a miner's home) along our hike

Marmot!

Moose!

Gorgeous sunset on our drive back to Estes

Leaving Estes, we stopped to see our friends, the Lyons, at their temporary home in Littleton, joining them for a church service and lunch.

And then off for our 9 hour drive back to Salt Lake City where our much missed RV home was still in repair at General RV.  We had a day here to unpack our 2 weeks of clothes, do laundry at our hotel, repack, and run errands before leaving for Alaska tomorrow!!!   

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A) Mesa Verde National Park
B) Telluride
C) Breckenridge
D) Estes Park
E) Littleton