July 8, 2026

Today we took off to Salida to escape the heat and smoke.  We went over Cottonwood Pass on the way over there.  It was beautiful, but lots of traffic as usual.  There is nowhere in Colorado anymore where there is not lots of traffic.  Anyway, we are staying at the Silver Ridge Motel.  We stayed there on an anniversary trip a few years ago and enjoyed it.  Two years ago when we were here we stayed at the Loyal Duke next door.  Both are nice.  We definitely made the right choice on coming over here.  No smoke and 10-20 degrees cooler.  We roamed around town this afternoon and made the usual thrift store stops.  I got a couple shirts and Joann got one.  Very reasonable and like new stuff.  This evening we ate supper at Highway 50 Burger.  We then went down to the Frantz Lake State Wildlife area.  It was a beautiful evening and stunning sunset down there.  Surprisingly, there were very few people and no mosquitoes.  We hiked around one of the lakes and then headed back to the motel.

July 9, 2026

Today we had breakfast at the motel.  It was a very good free breakfast...biscuits and gravy, sausage, eggs, pancakes, waffles, and cereal if you wanted.  Then we headed down to Royal Gorge.  Joann had never been there and I hadn't been there since I was a kid.  It had changed a lot.  We took the gondola across the gorge and then walked around to the bridge and walked back to the main building.  It was pretty hot.  There really weren't that many people there - which surprised us.  On the way back we took a detour through the mountains on dirt roads and went to Westcliffe and DeWeese Reservoir.  It was blowing hard at the lake so we didn't get out.  We saw a few pelicans and lots of geese.  We then headed back to Salida and went to the Stone Bridge State area.  It was very nice and shady.  We walked by the river on the trails and even got sprinkled with rain a couple times.  Again, nice and cool and no mosquitoes.  An added plus - no people.  Then we headed over to Hecla Junction in the Brown's Canyon National Monument.  We hiked on a trail by the river a couple miles.  We went to the end of the trail at Siedel's Suckhole Rapids.  We only saw two people on that trail.  It was later in the evening, and cloudy so it was not to hot and not too cool. We had supper at a place in Poncha Springs - turkey sandwich and fries...it was good!  It was a wonderful day the Lord blessed us with!

July 10, 2026

Today we headed over toward Buena Vista and went up the road past Clearcreek Reservoir.  Sadly, it was nearly dry.  We then went on up the road toward Vicksburg.  We saw a group of mountain sheep alongside the road climbing on the hillside.  There were several little ones in the bunch.  It was fun to watch them climb the rocks.  We then headed on up toward Vicksburg, but had forgotten how rough that road is and how busy it is.  We decided to turn around as we'd seen all that before.  We then went on over to Twin Lakes.  It also was very busy.  So, we decided to head over Weston Pass.  It was busy too, but the road is rough enough that people can't go too fast.  Lots of people just driving and camping up there.  We saw a cow moose and her calf.  Others were going so fast they didn't even see them.  If you look closely at the cow moose you can see a stick that is stuck in her neck on the left side.  It didn't seem to be bothering her.  Instead of going into Fairplay, we cutoff over to Hwy 285.  What a zoo that road was back to Buena Vista.  People in a major hurry and lots of them.  It was not a fun drive on that road at all.  We then went into town to get some pizza.  We ended up at a pizza place down by the river.  It had good ratings - but, the pizza was probably the worst we've had.  We bought three pieces and ended up giving one of the pieces to a hippy guy sitting next to us listening to the live music.  When I asked him if he wanted it, he said yes but asked that we remove the pepperoni.  He was a vegetarian.  I asked if he minded if we pulled it off with our fingers as we didn't have any forks.  He happily said it was no problem as he was a hippy.  haha  Nikon Z50II, Iphone15 Pro and Panasonic G97