Still busy, but time's flying

The weather has really started to change, you can feel the frosty harbingers of winter.  There is snow on the mountaintops, but more importantly we can only sit out in the evening, even with our fire pit, for about an hour before one of us succumbs to going back inside.  But it is gorgeous, the clear skies are even clearer, the aspens are passing peak and many of the leaves at higher elevations are already gone, but it's opened new vistas to see that are normally hidden by the trees.  It's a wonderful time to be in Colorado!

We're down to less than two weeks, so we've even started making lists of what we still want to accomplish before we move on.  We haven't gotten in as much fishing as we wanted to, but we heard at the local fly fishing store that a fairly unique place to fish with the potential of huge fish was only an hour away in northern New Mexico, below the Navajo Lake dam on the San Juan river.  We decided to take a drive down and see what the big deal was.  It was a pretty drive south of Durango, you cross by the dam and go down along the face of the dam to the river where we found......fishermen, tons of fishermen!  It was a weekend after all.  We got parked and walked down to scope things out.

A pretty section of the river

A drift boat working

A few fishermen:)

An example of a big trout,
one we hope to have in our net when we go back

We are going there tomorrow and try our luck.

We also took a ride over the ridge to Vallecito Lake to check it out.  We started to take the road around the lake, but only made it halfway as they had closed the road for the season, so we turned around and drove out on the flats on the head of the lake and enjoyed the view with our coffee.

Coffee time

Then we noticed a road we had never been on before, these things call to us you know, and poked our nose up along the Los Pinos river above the lake.  It dead ended after several miles at an absolutely beautiful spot where the trail continuing up the river began.

Awesome, huh?

Jan had planned and scheduled a horseback ride back in the spring, but unfortunately it was cancelled due to bad weather.  They couldn't reschedule as it is nearing the end of the season, but the stable kept Jan's info just in case.  Well, the phone rang, an all day trip was available and off Jan went, no I don't do horses:)  This time the weather was exceptional, but cool.

Getting ready

Through the aspens

Views on the way up

Pretty steep

A happy Jan!

Nice

Along the way

Looking down at Electra Lake

Needless to say she had a glorious time.

We decided to take a picnic up to Andrews Lake on yet another beautiful day, but since it was only 41 degrees decided to eat in the truck:)  But we did hike around the lake.

Andrews Lake

Jan found yet another road we had never been on, she saw it on her horseback ride, so we poked into Purgatory Ski Resort, and the road went right through the ski slope, back and forth as we climbed the mountain.  We started back down and found a beautiful meadow area, where before selling to the ski resort and eventually becoming part of the National Forest, was the summer grazing area of the Harris Ranch.

What's left of the Harris Ranch

We are going to go back there with a picnic, and maybe see if there are any trout in that stream, and poke around back in the hills.  Tick tock.......