Trip to Ouray, CO

We spent a long weekend at the end of September, on a trip to explore Ouray, CO. I've been wanting to get there for decades. My neighbor Fred once made a point of enthusiastically recommending that I visit the town and surrounding area. The supposedly 5.5 hour driving trip from Littleton took us about eight hours, including some leisurely stops for breakfast and lunch, and two fuelups. I suppose we could've planned that better, by starting out with a full tank of gas, and food in our stomachs, but we enjoyed the stops as well as the drive, and we left plenty early, so it didn't really matter. Our drive took us South on 285 to Poncha Springs, then West on US-50 to Montrose, and 550 South into Ouray.

We stopped just before Kenosha Pass, to marvel at the huge stands of beautiful Aspen changing to their Fall colors. Then when we got moving again, we crested the hill, and the official Kenosha Pass viewing area was even more amazing, but there were dozens of other people and their cars there, so we kept moving.

Getting close to Ouray, this striking view of the mountains ahead caught our attention. I took this picture because of my fascination with the peak off in the distance, but later I realized that I loved the fence line leading into the picture, and the long stand of trees on the right, that were highlighted by the afternoon sun. Not to mention the nice clouds and sky. Did I ever mention I love those?

We arrived in Ouray in mid-afternoon, and settled into our hotel. While walking to dinner, the Beaumont Hotel was the first well-maintained historical building we encountered. It looked good, but even better, with those mountains in the background.

The old County Courthouse has a lot of history, of course. I vaguely remembered hearing that scenes from the movie "True Grit," starring John Wayne, were filmed there. We ran across a local resident on one of our walks around town, and he was proud to announce that he was invited to pose for a picture with Mr. Wayne, back when they were making that film.

As we were walking back from dinner, we marveled at the quickly changing shadows on the beautiful mountains surrounding the town.

Heading up the Ouray Perimeter Trail on Saturday morning. This trail is a great way to see the local area, while getting some exercise. It leads up past the Box Canyon concession, then the Ice Park, and this South Reservoir, then loops around the entire town.

There were lots of Fall colors to see on the Perimeter Trail. This pipeline routing water from the Uncompahgre River to the South Reservoir was surrounded by beautiful views.

We encountered this peaceful meadow shortly before we decided to head down into town from the Perimeter Trail.

Several streams cross the Perimeter Trail. It was really a delightful experience.

So many beautiful Fall colors in the mountains at this time!

We really enjoyed this hike! But it also really tired us out. We need to do a lot more of this!

Here's what the Perimeter Trail looks like on the "All Trails" app I was using, to keep us on track. The blue dot is where we've just come down one of the access trails, to get back into town. We got about 2/3 of the way around the loop. From what we were told, the other part is lower, and winds through town, so it's not as interesting. But our real reason for coming down, was that we had had enough for the day, and were ready for our late lunch!

On Sunday, we drove from Ouray over the Million Dollar Highway to Silverton. We saw some amazing scenery and mines, and stopped on top of Monarch Pass, which I've heard about for years, but never seen. This is one of my favorite pictures from the drive.

We had enough time after we got back from our drive, to visit the upper and lower Box Canyon trails. The lower trail to the waterfall was cool and refreshing, and the power of the water was impressive.

We stopped on the way back home, to snap a photo of the Blue Mesa Reservoir near Gunnison. It's a beautiful long lake, especially in the morning, with the sun sparkling off the water.

What a trip. We are so glad we went!

MSFS 2020 Preview!

I just ran across several Flight Simulator vloggers' posts, positively *raving* about Microsoft's pre-Alpha demo in September, of their new Flight Simulator (MSFS) 2020 software, planned for release next year. After watching their video blog posts, I'm getting tentatively excited about the prospect of a new MSFS release, after the long hiatus following their release of Flight Simulator X, ten years ago. If you're a FlightSim enthusiast, and you were unaware of this new development in the past few weeks, you might want to watch this half-hour video by a knowledgeable and well-spoken vlogger who goes by the handle frooglesim.

Trip to Florence

We visited Jennefer's mom in Florence, Oregon, which is near the coast, about an hour drive from Eugene. We took Mandy with us on the airliner, and as usual she was an awesome traveler. Our rental car turned out to be an Audi Q3 crossover, which delighted me, as a friend at work bought one several years ago, and raved about it, and I've been wanting to try one out.

Sorry I can't get to my photos from the trip, from where I am right now, so I've added some hyperlinks to get you to some pertinent information and pictures on the net.

We went for a few outings to explore the area. The surrounding forests and river give the area a calm and peaceful feeling, and we enjoyed a few walks there. We visited downtown Florence, and the Bay Street restaurants and shops on the Siuslaw River waterfront, and took too many pictures of the Siuslaw River Bridge, which carries Highway 101 across the Siuslaw River, not far from where it meets the ocean. Of course, we also visited the River Roasters coffee shop several times.

We visited the Heceta Head Lighthouse, read some good information posted on the walls, and learned from some local rangers, who were there to talk to visitors about the area. There is a nice trail to get up to the lighthouse from the beach, and we followed it a little farther, as it continues on to the top of the hill and beyond. We enjoyed the lush forest and some awesome views of the beach below.

We enjoyed chatting with Jennefer's mom while having breakfast in the mornings. Jennefer fixed dinner for the three of us, almost every night, so we found ourselves at Fred Meyer grocery store almost every afternoon, on the way home from whatever adventure we'd had that day.

Jennefer's niece brought her family to visit one day. We walked to the nearby North Fork River and hunted for crawdads to catch and release. Then her niece prepared a delicious Paella dinner. I didn't think I liked Paella, but I love it, the way she prepared it.

We got our fair share of overcast and rain, considering that we were on the Oregon coast in the Fall, but we enjoyed that, too. On the really wet days, we relaxed in the living room, with the wood burning stove going.