I don’t have a lot to say about this week’s adventure. I’ll mostly let the images do the talking for me. Virginia and I first began visiting the San Juan Mountains in 2010 and since then we’ve been a handful of times, sometimes in summer to see the wildflowers and sometimes in fall to see the autumn colors. I think it would be worth our time to explore there even in winter. All last week I was seeing reports coming out of Colorado indicating that the aspen trees were rapidly turning color. I watched in anticipation when the reports came in for Red Mountain Pass, a stretch of the Million Dollar Highway between Ouray and Silverton. Towards the end of last week, the color change was approaching 75% and that it wouldn’t be long before the peak. It was a bit of a last-minute decision to throw a few pieces of extra clothing in the trailer along with enough foodstuffs to see us through the weekend. We climbed aboard the Toyota 4Runner, and headed for Ridgway State Park, our base camp for two days. Ridgway is only 5½ hours from our home and a terrific place to camp. For movie buffs, Ridgway is the setting for the 1969 John Wayne movie, True Grit. Unfortunately, the northern portion of the San Juan Mountains was not as far along in the color change as the area around Red Mountain. We explored CR-5 and CR-7, both beautiful dirt road drives into the Mount Sneffels wilderness area. We enjoyed sunrise on this side of the San Juan Loop on Friday morning. Later in the day we drove down the Million Dollar Highway and stopped in Ouray and Silverton. The real show of the trip was the stretch of aspen forest through Red Mountain Pass; truly an exceptional experience.

From County Road 7, outside of Ridgway, Colorado. Mount Sneffels in the background.