Ouray, CO - Part 1

So, I'm finally getting around to posting about our trip to Ouray, CO (pronounce your-AY) that we took a month ago! You will see a TON of pics on this post, and believe me, its not even half of them!!

This post is from our drive up and our first full day there. We left on a Monday morning right after breakfast and got there right about dinner time. The girls didn't sleep a wink the whole trip!! Thank God for portable DVD players is all I have to say (and thanks to Adam and Leanna for letting us borrow theirs!!). Let me tell you, packing 2 adults and 2 kids into the back of a Jeep Wrangler for 3 days is not easy!! But we managed to squeeze in and had a really great time.

Here are a few pics of our way in:

The beautiful Colorado skyline

Trout Lake - one of the most photographed lakes in the world!

My attempt at being artistic :o)

I love this pic with the shadow and sunlight

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:

This is Hannah's first picture ever - nice little Jeep ad, doncha think??

Here's Seth ready to go - that smile didn't leave his face the whole time

The girls are ready to go!!

And away we go...

The view from my side of the jeep

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:

Hannah Driving - she did not want Daddy to help!

Cailyn and Mommy hanging out

When she got sleepy, she just snuggled right in

Seth took this pic - I think its AWESOME!

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:

Here's the girls at the summit at 12,840 feet! They were happy to be out of the car!

Mommy and Cailyn stealing a snuggle (check out the jeep trail behind us!!)

Hannah insisted on "mountain climbing", so here she is with Daddy. If this picture doesn't make you feel tiny, I don't know what will. What a mighty Creator we have!!

Continuing on the climb...

"Woohoo!! We made it!!"

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.

Coming down into Animas Forks




Cailyn's Photo Shoot:









Hannah's Turn:

Coming down the stairs of one of the houses

To round out the day, we got to go through the tunnel outside of Ouray - the tradition is you honk the whole way through. As you can imagine, it was one of the girls' favorite things!

Finally we see "home". They call Ouray the "Switzerland of America".

So, that concludes our first day. Hopefully it won't be too long before we can post the pictures for day 2!