August 29- - Ouray, CO

Our goal for today was another segment of the Perimeter Trail, so we set off up the road in front of our RV park.  The road goes by houses that were built during the mining years of Ouray, in the 1880s and 1890s.   This house started life as a log cabin in 1884, and the subsequent builders kept the bones of the house while they remodeled and added on.  Isn’t that a great backyard view?

Like the other side of the trail, this one also has a 400 some foot rise, which is what happens when a town is built in a bowl of lofty cliffs on all sides.

See that bridge waaay up there?  That’s where we were headed.  Either we’re getting acclimatized to the altitude or the rise was more gentle, but at this stage, at least, the walk was a bit easier than yesterday’s mountain goat scramble.

Oh, wait, I take that back.  At least there is a cable that I can grab to help haul myself up.  Up.  Up.

But the view from the bridge is wonderful in both directions, and I stood there a long time enjoying it.  (And breathing.)

        

After enjoying the view from the lofty bridge, we went ahead on an almost level path around to a small reservoir where Gypsy got to soak in the chilly water.

    

There are a lot of the little yellow daisy-like flowers, and I happened to see this one, lone pink flower.

 

Then the path lead us down to the Ice Park.  Ouray has ice climbing competitions in the winter and there are viewing platforms and benches all along the southern wall of this canyon.  We’ll just have to imagine it covered with ice and intrepid ice climbers showing off their skills to the local population.  I can pretty much guarantee that I will never actually be at a place where they are ice climbing since that involves winter, and I don’t do winter.

We chose to leave the trail here and walk back into town, since it was after 1 pm and I was ready for lunch.  Gypsy likes it when we have lunch in town – everyone who walks by tells her how pretty she is, and she usually gets a bite of whatever we’re having.  Deli sandwiches in this case.

Here are a couple more of the old Victorian houses originally built during the mining era.  I like the Nutcracker guards at the red house’s front door.

      

Later in the afternoon we drove up a dirt road into the mountains where many of the original, and some still operating, mines are.   This is not one of the operating ones, obviously.

   This is the view looking back down the valley toward town.  We thought this crack in the cliff filled up with monster boulders was pretty fascinating.  We’ll come back here when it’s sunny and we have more time.