Colorado

I'm so excited to finally have seen the Rockies, walked in the snow and experienced the amazing alpine mountains of Colorado. The mountain views here are everything I thought they would be. I just don't ever want to leave.

This place is such a change from all the desert regions we have visited. To start with it is cold, and today it is raining. But despite the coldness and the snow it seems usually bright and sunny. We started in Cortez, just on the border of Colorado and New Mexico and visited the Mesa Verde national park (see blog post below this one). Then we headed north along the San Juan scenic byway, through some spectacular scenery. This scenery is nothing like what we have seen so far... snow topped jagged mountains, miles upon miles of alpine forest feet deep in snow, gushing torrential rivers and mountain log cabins. I tell you, this is a place that I could live quite happily. Not far along the San Juan byway we stopped for breakfast. We drove into a little byway just by the gushing Dolores River where we sat and ate bacon sandwiches. It wasn't snowy in this region, but the river was so rapid from all the melted snow coming down from the mountains. We sat for an hour to take in the scenery, whilst the kids fashioned arrow heads from flint. They had such fun doing that.

The drive all the way to Tullaride was just so spectacular that it took us a few hours instead of just one hour, as we kept stopping so many times. We stopped at one point to let the kids play in the snow. They took out some cardboard boxes with them and used them to slide down the slopes. It was strange to be warm in the snow - we didn't need any coats, hats or gloves, as it's the spring time.

We drove on to Tullaride, a town recommended to us at the visitors centre. We had hoped to stay there over night but the town had no RV parks, so we just drove through it. Tullaride is a quaint little town set at the foot of the mountain. The houses in it are just adorable beach hut style mountain log cabins. Dan pointed out that everyone in the town was young, lol.

From Tullaride we took a few back roads to try to find some free camping that we were told about. We couldn't find the camping but the drives were worth it anyway. Eventually we arrived in a town called Ridgeway, where we spent the night in a tiny RV park called Webber's. The man who owned it let us stay at less than the advertised price, and then gave us a site with the most beautiful view over fields full of cows and horses, to a valley with a snow capped mountain in the distance. It was like something from a post card.

We have now moved on to the next town and we plan to rest here for maybe four days as we've just done so much driving lately. There are some hot springs nearby, and another national park, so we will venture out to them at some point. There are many more photos like this in the Colorado Album so do check them out.