Friday Traveling

We decided to do a little cycling around town in Durango before leaving. This is a bike town and as such it has it's own bike highways of a sort. The Animas river trail was very scenic with artwork here and there, businesses right along the trail, and small-gauge rail just a few feet away at times.

Heading out, we plan to stop in Parker, CO for the night. We are at about 7000ft elevation here and we'll have to climb up to 10,000ft or so through Wolf Pass. We're going to avoid I-70 this time since it's having problems with snow.

After Pueblo, near the sand dunes area, we saw what appeared to be a large grass fire. This turned out to be a huge dust storm. It was so big that we were in and out of it for 30-40 miles.

Starting to get out of the mountains and back into the plains.

Last hotel, and then we head home tomorrow.

Thursday in Durango

This morning we decided to ride the Colorado Trail which begins/ends (depending on the direction you're headed) right outside Durango. It was definitely a huge contrast to what we've been riding in Moab. We did an out and back totaling nine miles. I'll have to check the GPS file to see just how much climbing we actually did, you can see in one of the overlook pictures that we are a ways up there after leaving from the trailhead right next to the river. Weather was fantastic today, you could be wandering around next to a snow pile, sun shining, wearing short sleeves.

Later we went a different direction, this time right next to town. The Horse Gulch trail system. It was a lot of fun with ups and downs that were really flowy and pretty smooth. There is an impressive number of trails in this system, totaling about 28 miles. We only rode a couple of loops but it was well worth the trip over.

Hoping to see some more of Durango tomorrow - historical district etc. then do some driving and head toward home.