One of the main things you do in Ouray is go offroading. They say you can spend 3 weeks there and take a different trail everyday and still not go on them all! Ouray is an old mining town and there are tons of little mining trails and all kinds of offroad trails to go on. Our first day there, we tackled Engineer Pass. It took us all day, and we had a lovely pic-nic near the top. Come along on our journey:
One highlight for Seth was finally being able to carry on some traditions to his own kids. One these trails, you drive extremely slow and enjoy every bit of scenery. So, the girls got to spend a lot of time on our laps, and even driving! (You see Hannah driving below, you'll see Cailyn's debut on the next post). Before you freak out about being on these huge cliffs with no seatbelts on the kids, the rules of offroading state that you do NOT wear a seat belt so you can bail out quickly when you need. So, on that note:
When we were there, the leaves were in the height of changing, and we took literally hundreds of pictures. Its nearly impossible to capture the grandure on film, but here's a few attempts:
Once we made it over the summit of Engineer, we headed down to see the Animas Forks mine which boasted one of the highlights of the day - a real bathroom!!! I never thought about how difficult it would be to convince our 3.5 year old - into whom we've been drilling the concept that you ONLY go on the potty- that its actually ok to go on the rock...but that's another post.
This neat little ghost town has some structures that are still in tact and you can even explore some of the houses - including the home of a former owner of the Hope Diamond - he bought it for his daughter. Oh Daddy.... :o) Anyway, while Daddy was away with Hannah, Cailyn and I had a fun little photo shoot.