Last Hurrah in Colorado

So, most of you know that we recently moved to South Dakota, but before I get into that adventure, I need to write about our last "hurrah" in Colorado.  At the beginning of August, our dear friends from Tucson, AZ decided they needed to beat the heat down south, so they came to visit us for a week in cool Gunnison.  They wanted an "outdoor" experience, and although Peter and I rubbed our hands together mischievously at the thought, we decided to take it a little easy on them and we rented a Forest Service cabin instead of forcing them on a backpacking death march.  We had a great time showing them the beautiful scenery of Colorado, and I think by the end of the week they were sad to go back to Arizona.  I know we were sad to see them go.  This vacation came right after our terrible house-hunting trip to Spearfish, and it was exactly what I needed to relax and feel better.

Jack & Jaime 

Sophie, Jack and Jaime's dog and Natasha's new best friend.

The first thing we did when they arrived was...sleep in.  Peter and I were exhausted.  We had just gotten back from Spearfish the day before and we needed to recuperate, so we all spent the night at our little apartment in Gunnison and then we headed out to the cabin the next day.

The little FS cabin

We hiked around in the general vicinity, looked at some nearby native American archaeological sites and then drove out to Sargent's Mesa where Peter had worked on a timber sale the previous summer.  Apparently at Sargent's Park on Sargent's Mesa there is a war memorial.  Why it's there in the middle of nowhere is beyond me, but it was interesting to see at any rate.

Sargents Park

War memorial

Peter also remembered that there were some grate chanterelle patches in the area.  We didn't find very many because it was a bit early in the season, but we managed to find enough to go in our dinner that evening.  Natasha loved looking for mushrooms and she apparently has a taste for chanterelles.  She kept digging them up and eating them before we could collect them!

Chanterelles

Jack also tried his hand at chopping wood for the first time in his life.  He thought it was a lot of fun, but I'm sure if he had to do it every day, he wouldn't enjoy it quite as much.

Jack chopping wood

The next day we went up to Crested Butte.  It truly is a beautiful little picturesque town up in the mountains.  I wouldn't want to live there due to the fact that there is a certain...attitude among many of the locals, and the fact that real estate prices are way overinflated, but it's fun to visit.

Elk Avenue, the main street in C.B.

Neat house on Elk Avenue that has Colorado
license plates all along one side.

We also drove a little ways north of Crested Butte up to a tiny ghost town called, Gothic.  I think it was once a mining town, like so many of the other towns in Colorado, that went bust and is now home to the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory.

View of the East River

The next day we went horseback riding up into the Fossil Ridge Wilderness.  I think it's been more than a decade since I've been on a horse, and Jaime is a major horse lover, so we thought it would be fun to treat the two of them to a beautiful ride in the wilderness.  It certainly was beautiful, and we even saw a Great Blue Heron, but after three hours in the saddle...we were all a little bit sore.

I was the last one in the line, so this was pretty
much my view the entire time.  Peter's horse
was rather flatulent, too.

The four of us having a jolly good time

Afterwards we drove down to the Currecanti National Recreation Area where you can see the eastern end of the Black Canyon.  It's quite the view!

View of the Black Canyon

We certainly all had a great time, and it was fun to visit new places or revisit others before we moved away.  There are parts of Colorado that truly are stunning.  Despite that fact, when I first moved to Gunnison, I was very depressed and unhappy with the area.  I was terribly lonely, but as I worked and started to make friends, somewhere over the course of a year it became home to me, and it was hard to leave...but that is a tale for another day.

Natasha and Sophie ready for their next adventure