Labor Day Weekend

I think it's time I bring back the blog. For the first summer since we began dating, Kevin and I really didn't go anywhere or do much. So, we made sure our Labor Day trip was extra special.

I think we succeeded.

Thus, here, once again, is our blog detailing our trip. We'll see if I can keep up to date with it regularly.

For our Labor Day weekend, we travelled to colorful Colorado. Specifically, we spent a majority of our time in Cortez, Durango, Silverton, and Ouray (my favorite).

Our trip started off a little rocky. I got off of work almost two hours late, and we had to rush to get out of town before the masses did. We didn't succeed. Our usual 1 1/2 trip to Payson took us about 3 hours. From Payson on it was smooth sailing. Well, until Gallup when we got hit up for money, at about 230 am, by some guy covered in blood.... but that's another story.

We didn't get into Cortez until about 330 am Colorado time. Thankfully we rented a room for that night so we didn't have to set up a tent at that time of day. One of the hotel workers was nice enough to knock loudly on the door at 8 am to see if we were still in the room though...

Our room was ridiculous. It had obviously been the owner's room at one point in time. One half of the room was your standard cheap motel room: small bed, desk, and a TV straight out of the 90's. The difference in our room was that sliding wood doors opened up into a full kitchen and living room, complete with a wood paneled wall, with a second door. We didn't get what the guy at the front desk meant when he said we could go in either way until we got into the room. We both wished we could have stayed longer to enjoy the room, but we had places to be!

We left our hotel room about 1130 Saturday morning. Starving, we drove around Cortez looking for somewhere to grab a quick bite to eat, preferably that was still serving breakfast. Then we found it: Mr. Happy's BB&G. And yes, we did choose it for the name. But, yum! We couldn't decide which of our meals were better. The funny thing was, the waitress that served us has family that lives in Mesa (we had no idea how funny this was going to become).

After stuffing ourselves, we headed to Durango to check out historic downtown. We had no real plans for this trip, and just went where the road took us. First thing we did was hit up the tourism office to see what all was going on. Turned out, there was a biker festival going on, but we weren't near any of the event venues. We did get some great biker people watching in, though.

Of course, we stopped a brewery in downtown. I had the pinkest beer I've ever seen. And it was delicious. The brewery was Carvers Brewing Co, and the beer was a raspberry wheat. Grand Canyon Brewery makes a good raspberry wheat, but its the same color as every other wheat beer. I was shocked but pleasantly surprised. We even got a mini growler to go to enjoy once we found our camp site.

After walking around Durango for a few hours, we decided to make our way up to Silverton, where we planned to stay the night. The waitress at Mr. Happy's raved about Silverton, so we figured we should spend a majority of our day there. It was only about an hour and a half drive through the mountains from Durango. The drive was gorgeous and time flew by.

We arrived in Silverton about 4pm on Saturday. We found the Ranger Station and were confused why they were closed. Turned out, the car clock was still on Arizona time, and we thought it was only 3pm. Oops. That put a rush on our time in Silverton, as we wanted to be at a campsite while it was still light outside. We've become pros at setting up tents in the dark, but we try to avoid it as much as possible.

We still had three hours to spend it Silverton. Turns out, three hours was quite a while. The town is tiny, and 90% of the buildings are the original building from when it was a mining town. As one of the stop owners put it, "that way all the rich people get scared off" and the town won't end up turning into a ski resort town. He was very proud of that fact.

We did some shopping and discovered one of the store owners lived in Phoenix, right down the road from us, for 40+ years until she needed a change of scenery (so we are up to 2 people who have connections to our home). After spending some time chatting with her, we moved on to a distillery that boasts about their Colorado made Rum. Well, those of you who know us know we like rum. Plus they had a rooftop patio for us to people watch on. Sounded like a win-win to us. Well, it ended up being more of a half-win. The rooftop patio was awesome. The rum, however, not so much. It probably would have been good if we had been whiskey drinkers. The rum had been aged in whiskey barrels and really clung to the whiskey flavoring. While the drink was much smoother than whiskey, it wasn't what we had hoped for. We decided to make up for it by trying out the local Silverton Brewery.

The service was so-so, but the beer was good. Plus they had a patio, which makes everything better. Especially when the temperature is 50 degrees cooler than home. We decided to split a beer just so we could enjoy the weather and the people watching. That's when we met person number 3 who had a connection to home. One of the bikers sitting next to us struck up a conversation. He mentioned he had just moved from California, and was having trouble adjusting to the altitude. He assumed we were from Colorado, but when we told him we were from Arizona, he began talking about all the years he spent in Mesa. Now this connection thing was getting funny. At this point, every single person we talked to for more than five minutes had some sort of connection to home. Unreal.

Before leaving Silverton, we had to get some Rocky Mountain Oysters. We were, after all, in the Rocky Mountains. One of the places that served them was called "Gumpy's Saloon." We had Mr. Happy for breakfast, so we might as well have Grumpy's for dinner. The place was cute and obviously still decorated from back when the town was booming. Our meal was complete with live entertainment from a 70+ year old man playing piano. After we finished we hurried out to the campsite right outside of town to get a spot before they were all gone.

That plan backfired.

All the campsites were full! Now what were we to do? We decided to look up how late the Ouray hotspring was open, since Ouray was only another 30 minutes from where we were. If we left right then, we would have two hours to spend soaking in the springs.

So we did. And oh was it wonderful.

But then it was 10pm and we still did not have a campsite. Thankfully we were surrounded by national forest and had plenty of sites to choose from. We also helped an international couple that flagged us town find a campsite.

So that was our Saturday. Sunday came early and we hung out in the tent for a while and enjoyed the sound of the stream we camped next to. It was gorgeous outside and we hadn't spent much time camping and being outdoorsy. There was a trail and old mining equipment by our tent, but we were out of water and had to go to town before going on a hike.

By the time we got into town there were few places still serving breakfast. We ended up in a little bistro that had excellent, bottomless coffee. I was in heaven. We sat in one of the window seats and enjoyed the scenery and our meal. And yes, most of our trip revolved around food and beverages. Isn't that the best kind of trip?

We finally made it back to the campsite just as our international friends were leaving. As it turned out, they were from the Mediterranean side of France and were on their way to a rodeo in Ridgeway. They tried to talk us into joining them, but we had to make it back towards Cortez that night and weren't able to go. Oh well.

Our hike was short. I swear there is no oxygen in Colorado. Plus we were running low on time. A combination of those factors made us turn around earlier than we expected. We still had to make it to the Ouray brewery to replace our pint glass that we broke on a previous trip, go back through Silverton and Durango, and make it to a campsite in the next 7 hours or so. So we made a quick stop at the brewery and met person #4 who had connections to home. The bartender grew up in Phoenix and then moved to Tucson for college, the exact opposite of what I did. Now this connection thing was getting ridiculous.

After the brewery we stopped at the Box Canyon waterfall to check it out. We could barely see the waterfall in the park, but it was loud! The fall spiraled around the rocks and would have looked really awesome if only we were able to get closer. The trip did provide us with a nice walk around Ouray with some excellent views of the town. There was another waterfall right outside of town that we stopped to look at, so we were still able to get our waterfall fill in for the trip.

Box Canyon Waterfall

There were two places in Silverton that boasted about their Rocky Mountain Oysters, so we had to stop at the other place on the way back. I let Kevin have most of the oysters while I enjoyed some Buffalo chili - yum. And the verdict is: Grumpy's has the better oysters, but Handlebar has excellent BBQ sauce to dip them in. No real winner. We drove down a little side road to leave and found a penny machine (we collect pressed pennies wherever we go). The machine was outside of an ice cream and fudge shop, so we stopped in to get something sweet.

Connection to home #5. This was the guy I mentioned earlier who was proud to scare off the rich people. His son went to ASU for school. Seriously, this is unreal. But so was the fudge his wife made.

After chatting with him for a while we headed back to Durango. We didn't get enough fill of the town the first time, so we wanted a little more before camping. On the way we found a store advertising homemade honey and free samples. We had to stop. Sadly, they did not have any honeycomb (the whole reason we stopped), so the trip was kind of a bust. But we did spend the next few hours researching how to start our own bee farm (I already make our own jelly, why not make honey too?).

So our next stop was the Durango brewery. Yes, we did a beer tour along with a site tour. I asked the girl to bring me her favorite. She offered to let me sample it first and I accepted. I decided I really liked it and anxiously waited her return so I could order it. I waited. And waited. And waited... and then got upset and decided I didn't want it anymore. We ended up having to go up to the bar to cash out. The first time our "winging" it didn't work, which threw us into a funk for the next few hours.

We spent the next few hours trying to figure out where we were going to grab dinner, since we obviously couldn't do it there. The first place we tried was packed, so we walked up and down Durango. There weren't any appetizing looking places, so we returned to the first place to see how long the wait was. We were told 40 minutes and the sun was already going down (we still didn't know where we were camping). S, we got back into the car and drove to a place that served food made with the honey from the honey shop. Turns out it was closed. Durango brewery really put us in a funk.

So, we returned to where we had the pink beer. We were just going to split one more beer but, after sending the menus away, decided we should just eat there so we could get to our campsite.

Thankfully we found a campsite, so our funk ended.

It was pitch black when we set up our tent, but we've pros remember? After we got it all set up, Kevin was messing around with his flashlight. All of the sudden, he noticed a pair of eyes looking back at him.

No wait, scratch that.

TWO pairs of eyes looking back.

They were big eyes. Fairly high off the ground. Trying to figure out what we were pointed at them. Growing up around cats I had my theories about what we were looking at, but I wasn't going to say it out loud. We slowly backed into the car and started doing our research about what big game is in the area.

Mountain lions.

Two of them.

Watched us put up the tent.

Thank goodness they are loner animals. After we finished our research on what to do when that close to lions (BTW, there's a significant chance you will get attacked, during the day), we shined our lights back at where they were hanging out. Gone. We shined our lights all around the camp area. Gone. Nothing. No eyes looking back at us. We backed the car right up to the tent and got in. They're too lazy to try to rip through a tent.

We survived! But waking up in the morning meant going back home.

We weren't ready to go home yet, so we decided to go to Mesa Verde and go on the tour we chose no to last summer. Going into the gate, the ranger commented (looking at Kevin's license) "Oh, Hardy Drive, I know where that is. My son used to live on that street." Seriously? The amount of people associated with Phoenix was unreal.

We went and explored the Cliff Palace. The guide warned us that we should have a lot to drink and eat, because the tour was 40 minutes long. Really, it was just a lot of hurry up and wait. While it was neat to walk around inside the palace and see the building up close, the tour was not nearly as fun as the tour to Balcony House. Oh well.

So then it was time to head home. I read aloud while Kevin drove the 8 hours home. We did, however, stop at Speedy's Truck Stop to get some of my favorite burritos (see my raves in previous blog posts).