Thursday, a travel day. Oct 20, 2022

 We left Katie's house this morning close to ten a.m. Durango is almost 7 hours from Castle Rock, and we chose the winding, scenic, mountainous route. It did not disappoint! Gorgeous fall color still blazing, rivers, lakes and ponds, minimal wildlife, a good lunch partway there, decent roads most of the way. No freeways, but we knew that. 

We went through Colorado Springs on freeway and it ended there. Through construction ( and a chipped windshield!!!!!!) to Canon City. Then we took a little detour to the Royal Gorge. Pretty amazing, but we didn't spend the money to stay and see. Seeing the lobby preview film was plenty scary for me. A gondola ride over a very deep gorge. The bridge is a very early, very tall suspension bridge. We are puzzled as to WHY they would have put it there . . . Practice? It went nowhere that we could tell. 

The Arkansas river was GORGEOUS, and we followed it through canyons, valleys, farmlands. . . Then we climbed hugely steep mountains. We also followed the Rio Grande River. AND the San Juan River. They are all gorgeous. We are jealous of the amount of water in Colorado. Utah is so dry in the southern part of the state. We saw a lot of Colorado we've never seen before. Pagosa Springs. Salida, where we had lunch in a little cafe because McDonalds was so crowded. We drove past Wolf Creek ski area. Just lots of cool stuff to see in this wonderful country of ours.

We arrived in Durango around 5:30 or 6 and we're so confused about how to find our hotel...such weird directions on my phone GPS and we circled the block to look again....and then I realized that I'd just programmed our GPS directions to get us to Durango. Not the hotel. Just Durango . So there we were-- right smack dab in the very CENTER of Durango. Our hotel was down the road a ways. Haha. We Made it.  Days Inn by Wyndham. I think Wyndham owns about everything. 

The colors of leaves were always so breathtaking. My phone can't do it justice, so we just smiled our way down the road. Really. The beauty of this earth just makes us smile.

Some photos for your enjoyment.

Circled in yellow is the gondola traversing a huge, deep, rocky gorge.

There's a large nice visitor center for "Royal Gorge Bridge" and activities. Zip lines, Gondola, a huge swing out over the gorge, films, rock climbing. And a gift shop, of course. 

A locomotive sits perched on the rim.

Even walking down the parking area to an overlook, one can not see the bottom. It's water and rocks I'm guessing. I've seen that before.

A suspension bridge. . . To. . . Nowhere? I guess I should have picked up a pamphlet or something while there. It will be something to Google later. And look up on an atlas or something.

Someone is on the swing (circled in red) ready to be swung out over the 1000 foot deep gorge. Crazy.

The little pointy white things is building tops across the gorge. The other "activities". One could walk across the bridge. For a fee. No thank you.

Lots of granite with sparkly mica. It was pretty. The Rocky Mountains are really ROCKY. Just overlooking Royal Gorge. We did pass over the Arkansas river, further down the road and with NO altitude. Easy peasy. Ha 

The Arkansas River.

Going through mountains. Lots of mountains. I think this was after the Wolf Creek Ski area, down near the bottom of that section. Very steep. Mike's truck has 10 speeds. He was going downhill in speed 3, I think, to go slowly and safely enough around hairpin curves on steep roads.

Entering Durango toward the end of the day, this glowing cottonwood peeked over the rooftops and greeted us at the end of the street. So pretty.

We ended up eating dinner at a place called "Serious Texas Barbeque." It was VERY much like places Damian and Tandy have taken us in Texas. Yummy.  We brought our leftovers home and have enough for either breakfast or lunch tomorrow. This hotel does have a free continental breakfast, so we'll see what it is. And if we have time because we need to have an early start to get where we need to be for our Mesa Verde Tours at 9:30 a.m. and at 2:00 p.m.