"He left yesterday behind him, you might say he was born again"

Leaving Durango was a tough call, but we only have three weeks total to run through this sampling of the great U.S.A.

As we headed north through the Rio Grande National Forest we realized that this area of the country is calling us.  Half the family is in Colorado for the second time this year.  So much to see and the nicest people we have every run in to as a general populations go.

As I have mentioned before, Emma was a bit tired of desert and was extra thrilled to see all the trees.

 

And we all were excited to see the snow, the roads were a bit scary.  Okay that was an understatement...I was screaming and praying for death while my husband begged me to just go to sleep. Reminded me of all those movies with mountain cliffs that end badly...but again our drive ended well.

We enjoyed watching the temperature plummet and guessing the altitude.  With a special feature from "Hazordoud Weather Outlook".

I guess this is where the wolves pass at Wolf Creek Pass. I must say that I find some satisfaction in the above link for Wolf Creek...it shows up on dangerousroads.org.

Then we hit this cute little town just in time for a potty break.  We found the local museum and took a brief break. At this point we are all pretty hungry and have just accepted that we would be living off of chips and protein bars...forever.

Would love to come back and explore this area or Rio Grande County.  The museum had a very admirable collection of the locals material objects and an amazing set of photographs showing before and after its "ghost era".

And their train actually works.

Finally...

We made it to Colorado Springs with enough time to really set up camp (where we will be for several days), go to the grocery and eat our take out from Noodles and Co.

Really we were open at this point to go back to tent camping since we would be here for several days, but we were lucky to get this location.  Our timing was not great, we were arriving on a Friday...in festival land.  Colorado has a pile of festivals starting this week and continuing until the snow comes.  There were no vacancies within a two hour radius...no hotels, cabins, or tent sites.  I have to admit I was a bit panicked that we were going to have to skip this part of the trip.  We were about to go with primitive camping in one of the many parks out here when the Fountain, CO KOA answered the phone and worked out a spot for us.  It wasn't a great location...but we were dry, warm, and safe.