So, after going to sleep while staring at the multitude of stars, I woke up staring at the mountains.
Unfortunately, My Man had not slept well at all. He finally fell asleep as I was getting up. So, I stoked the fire, made some coffee (out of a drip coffee thing – pretty handy when you have no electricity) and some oatmeal, wrote in my journal, read my Bible.
And then went on a hike. Because when you’re at a cabin in the middle of the mountains, a husband who has not slept well is NOT going to keep me from exploring.
I followed a trail obviously made by wildlife down the hill to a creek. I KNEW I should have woken up earlier to see the animals, but sleep was more of a priority, I guess, and I had to settle for just seeing the cutest chipmunks ever.
Anyways, by the time I got back, My Man was up and refreshed. We hung around a little, cleaned the cabin and then headed for our next adventure.
Our next adventure was NOT really what I had expected.
You know, when Coloradans say something is “four wheel drive,” they don’t mean your typical four wheel drive. They mean something between a walking path and a four wheeler path up the side of a 12,000 foot mountain, a mountain that is covered, not with dirt and gravel, but with man-size boulders and rocks. Pictures do not adequately show what our four hour adventure consisted of, especially since I was gripping the door handle and not thinking about a camera during the scariest parts, but these may help.
The online description of “you will be following the path used by the miners in the 1800’s” should have alerted me. Because these “paths” had, indeed, been made by the miners (who used mules and maybe wagons), over one hundred years ago and never improved since.
This was the calm, pleasant part.
I ate some of these wild raspberries – they were delicious and, thankfully, not poisonous.
One comfort was that there were actually quite a few adventurous crazies like us making the trek. Except that not longer became as much of a comfort when I saw the Jeep in front of us tilt at a 45 degree angle over some boulders, a fact made scarier since the wheels were, no joke, about six inches from the precipice. Screams came from that vehicle…SCREAMS.
But I had the most amazing driver ever. I honestly don’t know how he made it, but made it My Man did, most expertly.
We did enjoy it, especially when we reached the ghost town. And after that, we took the dirt road out, which looked so beautiful that I asked Caleb if it were paved. It just was so beautiful and smooth!
(Oh, and Carrie, please tell Jeremy that pointy rocks were the very LEAST of our worries.)
Anyway, with that adventure over, we explored the cute little mountain town of Ouray and ate elk and buffalo burgers at a restaurant. The town was great…the burgers, eh, not so much. We have a knack for picking sort of lousy restaurants on vacations.
OneDailyBlessing 