Hiking, day 60: Travel Day to Cigar Night

We headed home early on Sunday to make it to our weekly cigar club night. On the way back, we stopped in the Curecanti National Recreation Area just west of Gunnison to take a few photos. This was a beautiful area that we'd love to visit during the summer; this week, it was 2 degrees out when we stopped!

Made it home for a good smoke, dinner, and time with friends. Happy holidays, everyone!

Twin Peaks Hot Springs

For our last full day in Ouray, we kept it simple and spent the day in the springs.

We woke up to snow in the morning, so it was a good choice to stay in and soak.

Turns out we picked a great time to visit - during the first three weeks of December, Ouray is pretty slow, so we had most of the springs to ourselves during our entire stay.

Hiking, day 59: Ouray, CO

Today we spent the entire day walking around town. The majority of the downtown area consists of well-maintained structures from the Victorian era, so lots of beautiful houses and buildings.

Ouray was an old mining town, so there were lots of coal cars around town.

More views of downtown.

Happy hour at the KJ Woods Distillery - great spirits and great people...who apparently used to live two blocks up the street from us!

Awesome light fixture at a downtown restaurant.

View of the mountains behind our hotel. I couldn't get a totally in-focus picture, but that lighted sign says "Box Canon" up there.

Hiking, day 58: Box Canyon Falls

While we planned this to be a more relaxing trip, we did want to take advantage of some of the nearby hiking locations. Box Canyon Falls was just down the street from our hotel, so we headed there, first.

View of the river from the lowest bridge.

Approaching the falls.

The falls, mostly frozen.

Looking through the canyon.

View of the town from the trail heading from the falls towards the Ouray Ice Park.

Ouray is known for having one of the best ice parks in the world, and they just opened a few days prior to our arrival. We headed up the street to the bridge overlooking one of the more intense climbing areas.

Old rescue vehicle on the way back to town.

Part of downtown historic Ouray.

Now, time to relax! Our hotel had three of its own hot springs. We hit the outdoor one first.

...and then the indoor spring.

For dinner, we headed to another brewery, the Ouray Brewing Company.

The Ouray Brewing Company might have one of the neatest bars - you can see here the thick cables used for the swings at the bar!

Travel Day: Colorado Mountains

We decided to take a low-key, last minute vacation before the holidays. We headed to Ouray, CO, by way of the mountain highways instead of the interstate.

We hit an insane snow squall in Fairplay - complete white out!

Heading into another snow storm outside of Fairplay.

Finally made it through the snow and back to clear skies and views of the mountains.

We made it to Ouray around 4pm, and caught this view from our hotel room of the sunlight reflecting off the mountains.

Headed to one of the local breweries - Red Mountain Brewing - for dinner and a flight!

Hiking, day 55: Wapiti Trail

Most of my favorite local trails are still closed due to mud from the recent snow, so I'm having to travel a bit farther for my hikes.  Today I went to a different trail head at Heil Ranch in Boulder.

I got back to my car and this guy walked right in front of me.

Abandoned house on the road out of the park.

Hiking, day 53: Hygiene, CO

(Yes, there were two hikes I didn't document since my last post.) I was hoping to get back to one of my usual haunts today, but the earlier snow this week still had all of the Lyons trails closed.  So I took a turn around Pelle Crossing today instead.

These clouds are cool in their own right, but if you look closely you can see the skydivers parachuting down.

Hiking, day 50: Cigar Night

Now that the weather has improved again, I can enjoy the long walk to join my friends for dinner.

Hiking, day 49: Hiking for Scotch

We took a long walk to hang out with friends at dinner... including wine, Lagavulin, and a cigar.

Hiking, day 48: St Mary's Glacier

During my stay in Black Hawk, I wanted to use my location as a jumping off point for hiking. I didn't get out quite as often as I would have liked, but I did scratch one item off my list: St Mary's Glacier.

Even being a pretty frequent hiker - and this being a short hike - this was a bit of struggle at altitude. When I got close to the top, it was quite beautifully desolate. Loved the trees.

There's a very pretty lake at the bottom of the mountains - the glacier is in the background.

Closer view of the glacier.

I didn't stay long - the clouds rolled in and the rain started, but it was still a beautiful view.

Black Hawk, CO

For my next stop, I headed to Black Hawk for a few days so that I could be close enough to home to do some necessary meetings for work.  But I did enjoy walking around the town in my free time.