Durango, CO

We are back from Durango. I swear, I will try to upload pictures this weekend - from our trip, my cousin Jo's baby shower (it's her first!), and from when the Air Force Academy guys came to visit over Valentine's.

As we drove upon Durango at about 8:00 Sunday night, it appeared from the mountain pass and was a little bitty city of lights in the valley of the mountains. Durango was a really neat place. It is an old mining town stuck down in between the mountains, founded in 1880 because of the railroad. The historic downtown reminded me a lot of Gainesville, which was founded in 1850. I would say Durango's downtown was just a little more "country" or "miner-saloonish". I'm not sure if there's a word for that. Plus, it was surrounded on all sides by mountains!

Even more, it has the Animas river which runs right through town, and is used for competition rapid rafting in the summer. The scenery from this town is spectacular - snowy mountains with a river running down the base of them and historic buildings to complement.

Anyway, we didn't ride the famous Durango-Silverton train, but we saw it! We visited the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory that started the whole company there in Durango's downtown. We shopped the little shops and walked around the town to get some exercise (after eating all those calories!). We stayed in a condo a mile from down which had a perfect little sledding hill next to it. Cyrus and I made about 2 trips each -- we were dying trying to hike up the hill in that altitude! I got going pretty fast and it was fun. Cyrus aimed towards a little rock and got some air on his last jump. No pictures of this...sorry.

A neat story was our second night there, Cyrus and I went downtown to eat a nice dinner (Durango is FULL of local restaurants!). We missed our turn and drove past a corner in town with a little grassy area. There were two deer standing on the corner!! Then we U-turned to get back on track, and I was going to take a picture of the deer in town, but they were gone. I said, "they have to be somewhere close" and as we drove back into the downtown main street and parked, there they were!, in the middle of the road on the boulevard. This time there were 6 or more! They were just frozen there thinking "where are we?". They were so cute. Some people shewed them away and they just ran up the street, lost as could be. I guess they finally made it back to the mountain which was a couple of miles down the road. I might have some pictures of this if they turned out (it was dark).

We went skiing at "Purgatory" on Monday and Tuesday. I would have traded my $60 lift ticket for a massage at the hot springs spa down the road if Cyrus hadn't paid for both days up front. But I did ski the second day, and I did alright. It is fun, but I definitely don't desire to ski like Cyrus and Taylor do. They just go up the lift, down the mountain, and straight back to the lift. I like to take breaks (I took an hour long nap in the Powderhouse on a couch...it was awesome!). There was like a 1 hr blizzard on Monday, but the rest of the time, and especially Tuesday, the sun was shining on the fresh layer of snow, and the skiing conditions were great! Sorry - we forgot our camera both times.

We got home Wednesday night about midnight, and now I am back at work, and Cyrus is busy getting things ready for the store to open (this is his job now - LUCKY).