July 4th. We got an early start with the Jeep, 4-wheeled up very rugged roads into Yankee Boy Basin, in Uncompahgre National Forest, under the shadow of Mt. Sneffels (14,150'). The jeep was only a means to an end, the main goal was to attain the Blue Lakes Pass on the edge of the Mt. Sneffels Wilderness Area. This wiill be no small task for the young-ins. The hike was almost 4 miles round trip, but the main challenge was the elevation starting at ~11,500 and to...

Day 2 (July 3) in the San Juan Mts in Colorado. We visited Telluride. A nice little ski town that has plenty going on during the summer as well. There is a gondola ride that is free public transportation, the only public transport of its type in the U.S. See the pic. Later in the day, we picked up our Jeep rental in Ouray. 24 hours to do some 4-wheeling in the San Juan Mts. Awesome. This evening we took the jeep up to the box canyon above Ouray, posted some vid...

Playing catch-up with the travel blog. Seems that we keep finding camp sites w/out any wireless data coverage. On July 2nd, we started from Durango and headed up to Silverton and Ouray. Silverton is set in this seemingly impossible setting. The descent from the pass from Durango is spectacular. Silverton is a charming old West mining town, not a tourist trap... for the most part. We were able to find a nice little cafe in town, and fried dough. We did the token ...

A long day of driving, but punctuated with a couple short stops at Forts along the old Sante Fe trail in Kansas and Colorado. First stop was Fort Larned National Historic Site, near Larned, KS. This fort had original buildings from the fort built in the 1860's. No stockade or outer wall was ever built due to wood shortages on the prairie, so it seemed a bit odd to call it a fort. In contrast, we stopped at Old Fort Bent National Historic Site near La Junta, C...