Road Trip2 - part 3

Whew! We've been home 3 days and I still haven't finished this post!

Picture of the grandkids with the quilt I made for them:

From the Denver area we headed southwest through the beautiful countryside of Colorado:

And ended up at my sister and brother-in-law's cabin which is 30 minutes from Durango.  To call it a cabin is understated.  I think it is more of a lodge, complete with 6 bedrooms, a loft, and a media room. 

The view from the front deck:

 It is beautifully decorated and they designed and furnished it themselves.  In fact, my brother-in-law, the fabulous Terry made quite a few of the furnishings himself.

Yes, he MADE those chairs!  Not bad for a dentist, right?  And my sister, Mary Kaye, did a wonderful job of designing and decorating.

And who hasn't wanted an excuse to have this chandelier?

 Besides the usual driving around and showing us the area, they took us on quads up steep mountain trails!  We started by driving up towards Silverton, stopping at the summit to enjoy the view of Molas Lake:

Just past Silverton, we parked the truck and trailer at Eureka where there is an old mine.  We were at about 9,000 ft. altitude.

Mary Kaye backing one of the quads off of the trailer:

 From there we got on the two quads and drove up a rocky road to Animas Forks which is at about 11,000 ft.  Animas Forks is a ghost town that was quite a thriving community in the late 1800's. 

 It had about 5 mines in the area,

many saloons, a jail,

 homes and two assay offices.  In one of the houses you could see remnants of wallpaper.

From there we took a trail that was once a stagecoach road up to Engineer Pass.  We saw lots of other quads and some 4WD vehicles, but I would never drive a car up there.  It was challenging to get up some of the hairpin turns with so many rocks and pits in the road. 
I would have hated being in a stagecoach.  The road is narrow and there is no room for a car to turn around.  Once you start on that road, you are committed!  We had much more flexibility on the quads.  Near the top there were a line of 9 jeeps stopped because one of the jeeps had car trouble.  They were trying to fix it.  I mean, you are miles from civilization and no easy access for anyone to come help you, not to mention no cell phone coverage!

At the top there were beautiful views and it felt like the top of the world with all the other 14ers (or nearly so) surrounding you.  Here we are at about 13,000 ft.

 Engineer Pass was just under 13,000 ft:

The sky was so very blue and we were surrounded by beautiful scenery.

If you look closely, you can see a cabin and a waterfall.  But how does one get to the cabin?!?

One of the days we were there, Mark and I went to Mesa Verde.  Mary Kaye and Terry had been before, so they didn't accompany us.  Mesa Verde has the remains of the cliff dwellings built by the Pueblo Indians.  Truly amazing!

On our two day drive home we passed through Shiprock, NM and saw their big rock:

We stayed overnight in Laughlin, NV because Mark decided he needed to see it.  It's just casinos by the Colorado river.  We don't need to ever go back.  This was our view from our window.

It was good to get home and sleep in our own bed, but we had a wonderful trip and appreciated the hospitality of Sarah and Joel, Mary Kaye and Terry.

Road Trip2 - part 2

We've had a great time with our kids and grandkids.  We got to go to Donovan's soccer game 

and the BYU/Air Force game.  It was fun to go to the BYU game, but the team played miserably and lost! Since it was 9/11 they handed out flags to everyone coming in the stadium:

 And had a giant flag at halftime:

At the beginning of the game there was a flyover by some really cool planes (sorry I don't know what they were) and at halftime we were treated to a performance by their mascot, a falcon.  We were told that it is the only performing mascot in college football. It was pretty hard to get a picture.

After the game we drove up to the Air Force campus to look around.  The chapel is interesting:

We were able to meet up with a former seminary student of ours, Derek, who is a cadet at the Air Force Academy.  He identified the different buildings for us and told us a little about what it is like to be in the Air Force.  I know he was not the most diligent student in high school, so it was really fun to see him and see how well he is doing. He said he has a 3.8 gpa in college!

Road Trip 2

Taking the last child to college can be somewhat traumatic.  To alleviate this, we decided that as long as there wasn't any reason to rush back, we'd hit the road and take our bikes along.

Our first stop (before dropping the boy off) was Provo, Utah where we attended the BYU women's soccer game (we won!).  The next morning we met up with some of Mark's imaginary friends and rode the Alpine Loop which was about 40 miles and had much climbing.  Here is the group at Sundance:

 This is the back of Mt. Timpanogas:

That evening we attended the BYU Football home opener (we won!) and the next day headed to Rexburg.  BYUI has a really nice campus and David's apartment seems nice:

However, coming back from the Walmart we saw this truck..... I debated whether to post this picture, but Mark and I were laughing so hard, I decided what the heck:

 Because we were able to get David settled in one day and there were no further activities for parents, we decided to drive through Yellowstone.  It was really fun and we got to add Montana to the list of states we've driven through, even if it was only a tiny corner.  We have actually been in 7 states in the last 7 days!

We went through the west entrance, where this little town was:

Not too far into the park we saw:

We stopped to see Old Faithful and some of the other hot springs:

Further on we saw Yellowstone Lake, the largest mountain lake in North America:

We also saw the Grand Tetons from both sides.... the west side as we left Rexburg and the east side as we left Yellowstone and headed for Rock Springs. 

We spent the night in Rock Springs and then drove to the Denver area to play with our grandchildren.