Monday morning we got up and dropped James at a trailhead because he wanted to do a high peak. The girls and I went to the Ouray hot springs. It is an outdoor pool complex fed from the hot springs. The girls had a ball. There was warm water, cool water, and hot hot water. In the cool water section there were water slides and a giant inflatable obstacle course that we raced on so many times.
The kids had to pass a swim test to be allowed to use the slides and obstacle course. Anyhow, we swam for over three hours then went to pick James up from his hike. He made it to the Twin Peaks summit.
We went back to our camp and packed it up. On our way out of town the kids begged us to go back to the hot springs so we did for another hour or so. After our second round of swimming we drove to Telluride. Our first order of business is always to find our campground. We've been doing "dispersed camping" lately, which is out in the wilderness and free. Not in a campground. We drove 8 miles out of town and climbed a dirt, rocky road for about 25 minutes to 10,700 feet. It was thundering and pouring rain. We found a great spot but waited out the rain in the car. Then it rained harder, then it started hailing. Finally the rain slowed and James and I hopped out and set up the tent as quickly as we could. We drove to the Telluride Mountain Village and ate at Crazy Elk Pizza. After dinner we rode the gondola down to town and back. You would have thought we won the lottery with how excited and jacked up the kids were on the gondola.
They were bouncing off of the walls of the thing! After going down and back up we drove back to camp and crashed.
Tuesday morning James woke up before all of us and went for a walk. When he came back we were all up and went exploring. He had seen a porcupine so we set out trying to find it again. We did! We watched him from so close for about 15 minutes.
We walked back to camp and made oatmeal for breakfast. The "ghost" town of Alta is a few minutes from our campsite further up the mountain road. This is a former mining town that is now deserted. We parked and explored all around it for so long. We loved looking in all of the run down buildings and exploring the scrap metal.
We pushed on a few more minutes to look at Alta lakes which was a beautiful setting in the mountains. The only trouble was that we used all our water to cook the oatmeal and we were all dying of thirst. We drove back to the mountain village and explored. The kids went on the climbing rock but this was was very difficult compared to the ones we have done previously. We had to go up to help them down. After that we rode the gondola down into town. We got bananas and a baguette for lunch and then walked along the river. We found a park and the kids played on the playground. The championship game for the local women's softball league started so James and I sat in the stands with beers and watched while the kids played with some local kids in eye shot. It was a great summer moment.
After 5 innings we left for dinner at Brown Dog Pizza. This place must be owned by a Boston guy because there are signed Brady pictures and they were replaying the AFC championship game. Then we took the gondola back up to the car and drove to camp.
