Aug 30 -- Ouray, CO

Here’s the map of the perimeter trail around Ouray.  The green segment was our first day of hiking.  It’s a little over 3 miles from door to door, and this stretch was a 400’ rise.  As I said before, 400’ over and over again.  As it turns out, that is one of the lower levels.
The orange loop was our second day’s leg, over the bridge that spans the river that runs by the RV park and up to the Ice Park, then down the road and back into town.

We did the pink loop today.  It was only 2.2 miles but actually the highest rise, 472’.   We planned to go farther, but the afternoon storm blew up earlier and we come off the mountain when we start seeing lightning.  It’s neat here when the thunder starts rumbling, because the cliffs on all sides of the valley grab the sound and throw it back and forth.






The hotel around the corner has a beautiful collection of hollyhocks.
























  We picked up the trail at Cascade Falls, and climbed up until we could look straight across the canyon at the trail on the other side.  Yes, there is a trail over there!  Then we went up even farther to look down on the town.





Shortly after we got to this point the sky turned dark and we started seeing lightning, so we took the first chance to come back down off the trail, went back to Cleo and later in the afternoon, after the weather moved away, we went to the hot springs to soak.  A most leisurely day.