Having completed our “Grand Circle” of the Southern Utah Monuments (except for the Grand Canyon, which we will raft down at some point), we crossed into Colorado. Our last town with a main street more than 4 blocks long was St. George, UT. We were sick of our own cooking, 5 minute showers, and cheap red wine, and looking forward to long hot showers, restaurants, and cocktails for an evening. We remembered that Steven’s step-daughter had been walking precincts near Durango CO, a swing-state, for several weeks for Fair Share Colorado. We were lucky to celebrate victory with her and her team, and some local election winners at the lovely Stater Theatre..sweet! We can’t do anything except put lots of “smile” photos in this blog…no matter what we are doing we cannot keep the smiles off of our faces!
We had a signature “martini” (NOT a martini, but a yummy elixir anyway) with cucumber infused rum, lavender infused simple syrup, muddled mint and lime juice at the Cypress Cafe. After sharing a salad, lamb shank over greens and polenta, bread from “Bread”, a local artisan baker, the most bright and peppery olive oil, and pot de creme, we were happily infused and muddled ourselves!
We awoke to rain, and a light powdering of snow. The cold didn’t bother us as we share lots of down quilts to sleep, our LP furnace really cooks, Lety has a down vest, and during the day, we huddled in front of the fire on comfy couches at the youth hostel. When it cleared, we played disc golf at Fort Lewis College across the street while Lety ran free in the scrub. Later we swam and played at the most amazing community center. Durango has won a national award for this site with slides (faster than any water park!), whirlpools, lazy rivers, a spa and sauna, pool tables, etc. WHEEeeeeeee! We really like this darling town of 17,000 happy people!
We are pretty upset that our mapping system is now based on AppleMaps, not the former GoogleMaps. Sending us nowhere near the campground we sought, we got out to stretch our legs in the San Juan Forest, only to have four rangy coyotes immediately zero in on Lety, likely thinking about their next meal. On the other hand we saw a charming sign in our tour of the forest, “Slow down for pot-bellied pigs…they are small”. We just hope they are bigger and tougher than hungry coyotes!