Day 4 – Rocky Mountains Day

Our 4th day was pretty much all about driving as we went from eastern Colorado to the southwestern corner of Colorado. We ate a fairly decent continental breakfast buffet at the Quality Inn before hitting the road early. The fog from the previous night was still there to greet us in the morning as we started south two lane rural roads, leaving interstate highways behind us for the time being.

Within the first hour the fog lifted and we were treated to one of the more beautiful drives of our trip. Other than a brief “we might run out of gas in the middle of nowhere” episode (“surely these people must get gas?”) – it was pretty smooth driving.

The first part of the drive consisted of seemingly endless flat, grassy plains where we saw some roadrunner, cattle and horse farms, and even a deer that Lauren managed to capture as we passed it at 70mph. We saw the fingerprints of mankind with the occasional boarded up buildings, forgotten towns, abandoned automobiles, windmills and oil pumps.

Eventually the plains turned into rolling hills and after awhile you could see snow capped mountains in the distance. We wound our way through one mountain range, stopping on the other side in Alamosa where we stopped for authentic Mexican food at Calvillo’s.

After leaving Alamosa we first scaled some ear popping rocky mountains before making the slightly scary descent on the other side before arriving – a few hours later – in Durango. Durango was a hip little town. We stayed at the historic Strater Hotel which was walking distance to everything. We had dinner at Steamworks Brewing Company for some halfway decent pub grub, then hit the sack early.

Number of States: 4

Total Miles Driven: 459