August 16 - We leave Durango for the slide southward towards home. We flew through Pagosa Springs, through Chama, NM, and on to our campsite just south of Angel Fire, NM. That was a whole other adventure in itself. Probably because it was a long, windy drive, and it rained cats and dogs on the way. Therefore, no pictures. We did go into Taos and visited Kit Carson's home. We went from there to just outside Santa Fe, where we explored and shopped some more. From there, we stopped at Darrell's cousin Dick and wife Marcia's in Albuquerque for a few days of visiting. From Albuquerque, we headed for the White Mountains, and Show-Low, where we stayed at a really nice campground there called Fool Hollow. It was a nice way to return to the desert heat.
Now we're back at the ranch, laundry done, and ready to go again!

One last visit to the Durango-Silverton narrow gauge rr. Here at its home base in Durango, it has a museum, with lots of artifacts and photos from way back when.

These ruins date back to 1100-1300 a.d.

Hovenweep is located along the edge of a canyon.

We ended our trip with a visit to Hovenweep, which is a national park, actually located right over the border in Utah. The whole four corners area is populated with ancient pueblo ruins, some of which are unreachable by the average person, or on private property.

Ruins at Painted Hand Pueblo. These places were in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Good thing we had the GPS.

We discovered that near our campground in Southwestern Colorado, there are many pueblo ruins. We spent a day exploring Canyon of the Ancients. Here is a giant kiva at Lowry Pueblo Ruins.

August 13 - After travelling the Million Dollar Highway, we decided it would not be a pleasant experience pulling the 5th wheel on it. We opted to go from Ridgway, past Telluride, and down to Cortez on our way to Mancos State Park, which is about 25 miles west of Durango. This road is called the San Juan skyway. It is one of the nicest roads we've taken in Colorado. Unfortunately, no pictures here.

Darrell caught the backside of this mystery bird. After consulting with our birding friends, we think it's a Western Tanager.

For many of the hikes we wanted to do around Ouray, most of the trailheads were reachable only by 4WD. Ouray is the jeep capital of the world, and is known as "Little Switzerland". We settled for the Portland Trail, which was just south of the town, and took us to an overlook. Along the way, we enjoyed the aspen.