Wednesday May 29, 2014

 

Non-Travel Day

 

Our plan today was to drive  north on US Rt . 550 to the town of “Ouray” and return via the same route, north of Ouray there was a massive landslide several weeks ago and the DOT is still working the open the road and set up some barriers to protect the road from future slides, and the road is only open to through traffic between 12:30 and 1:30 PM. The drive north on 550 is part of the “San Juan Skyway” scenic drive passing through fantastic mountain terrain, passing over Coalbank Pass at an elevation of 10,640 feet and then Red Mountain Pass at an elevation of 11,018 feet. We arrived in Silverton around noon and decided to continue north to the slide zone; calculating that we would get there during the 1 hour the road is open. When we arrived we were pleasantly surprised to see a short line of vehicles waiting in line, we only had to wait about 20 minutes to proceed. The passage through the construction zone was only one lane of traffic at a time, with the construction occurring in the right lane along the mountainside, and the traffic passing along the outside lane, and this was terrifying as there was no shoulder or guardrail, several feet off our left tire was a shear drop-off into
the valley below . We were glad to get past this construction zone. Arriving in
Ouray we stopped at the “Box Canon Waterfall”, a city park, where we climber
down to the base of a huge waterfall and Jack climbed to the top, 96 steps and
then several hundred feet on a rocky trail. We then drove through Ouray, a quant mountain mining town, with some beautiful Victorian homes. We continued
our trip over the “San Juan Skyway” scenic drive to the towns of Ridgway,
Telluride, Dolores and Mancos before stopping for dinner in Durango. This was a long day of driving but it was all through beautiful country of valleys, mountains, rivers, waterfalls and
forests.