Anyway, here is the daily summary of the whirlwind Colorado part of our trip.
09/16 - We headed north through more mountains and stopped for some supplies in Boulder before camping in Rocky Mountain National Park (Amy needed a sleeping bag, we also picked up some camping food). We got a great camp site for two nights and set up our tent. Almost immediately some deer appeared in our site, but we only saw them that one time. It was cold that night, good thing we both had warm sleeping bags!
09/21 - We headed south through Redstone and toward the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. The fall colours were just amazing, yellows and reds and oranges against the evergreen background. We ended up in Ouray, a cute little mountain town that calls itself the "Switzerland of America". There are lots of 4WD trails in the area, so we planned to rent a Jeep the next day and explore.
09/23 - There was a hot air balloon festival in Mancos that weekend (we had seen a brochure in the Durango visitor's center, which is one of the reasons we chose to stay in Mancos). We had signed up for a balloon ride for this evening, so we found our assigned pilot and piled into his van to head out to the launch site. We were having a bit of trouble getting the balloon inflated, because we were one of the last groups to set up and the wind was starting to pick up. Our pilot decided to abort the flight, and to give us a good ride the next morning rather than a mediocre one in the evening. Oh, and we saw some more of Mesa Verde park again during the day.
Our adventures in Utah are coming up in the next post.