Colorado- Part 1

Happy Monday, friends!

It’s been a long time since I’ve been on here! Life has been busy, but great!

We are back in school and loving it! Emily is busy with cheer, Lizzie is busy with volleyball, Chris is coaching football, and I’m just trying to keep up with everyone between all of this!

The first week in August we went on a wonderful family vacation to Colorado.

My family fought me all year on not going to the beach, but I wanted to see the mountains and show the girls there are other beautiful things in the world besides just the beach!

We LOVED Colorado! It was beautiful and I don’t feel like the pictures truly do it justice.

We left bright and early on a Saturday morning!

Our goal was to drive until we just couldn’t drive anymore. We were headed to Ouray, CO and it was about a 19 hour drive from our house.

We ended up making it to Alamosa, CO that first day. It was 15 hours on the map, but by the time we stopped for gas and to eat, we were in the car for 17 hours! Whew! LONG day!

The next morning we left Alamosa and headed for Ouray, CO.

The mountains we started seeing that morning were gorgeous!

To get to Ouray, we had to drive what’s called the Million Dollar Highway.

Our first town we went through was Durango, CO.

When we were driving through the downtown area checking things out, a big ole’ deer just walked right across the street in front of our van! We couldn’t believe it!

We continued driving on the Million Dollar Highway and stopped probably 5 or 6 different times to admire all the beautiful scenery!

Molas Pass that is pictured below was one of our favorites!

The next town we made it to was Silverton, CO. This was the cutest little mining town! We stopped and souvenir shopped here and ate lunch. This town had the coolest vibe to it!

Bear Creek Falls was another favorite stop along the Million Dollar Highway and a must see if you are out there!

We finally made it to Ouray, CO early that Sunday afternoon.

When they call it the Switzerland of America, they aren’t joking! It’s so pretty!

We found our hotel and got everything settled there, then went exploring the town of Ouray.

Our first stop was to Cascade Falls. This was a short hike so we thought it would be pretty easy. However, it was a very steep, short hike and made us sweat a little bit!

The falls were definitely worth it!

Next we went to Box Canon. This was Chris’s favorite hike that we did in Ouray.

Again, it was a very short hike. This was a lot easier than Cascade Falls, but there were more stairs involved.

This waterfall was POWERFUL! And loud! It was so neat to watch the water. You had to hike down inside a cave to see the waterfall and that’s what made it so loud.

It had rained a bunch a few days before we got there, so the water was extremely dirty.

After hiking we stopped for a snack and then shopped at all the cute little shops downtown. Everywhere you looked in Ouray you had the prettiest views of the mountains.

I was in awe the whole time.

That evening we decided to head to Telluride, CO. It was about 30 miles away from Ouray and we had always heard that’s where the rich people lived.

Ralph Lauren has a house there, Tom Cruise just sold a house there for 26 million dollars and Oprah is building a house there right now.

When we got there, it started raining on us a bunch. This was a bummer and we were all tired from traveling and hiking, so we decided to ride the gondola at Telluride and then head back to the hotel in Ouray. We didn’t get to sight see in this town like we had wanted.

I’ve never ridden in a gondola up the mountains before! It was a little scary and a memory I’ll never forget!

The views were incredible even despite the rain!

After the gondola ride, we went back to Ouray and went to bed because we had a super busy day the next day!

Well, that’s all I have time for today!

I plan to be back this week with more vacation recaps. I hope you have a great day and a great week!