Furita, CO to Durango, CO - 6/17/2013 Part 1

The road from Fruita to Durango was an experience in itself.  Colorado Hwy 550 goes through some mountain passes that have very tight turns.  But the incredible views were just awe inspiring.

But I am getting ahead of myself.  As we left Fruita I spotted this street sign and I just had to add it for our friends Cappy and Jim Townsend.

 

 

Before we entered the passes here is the type of view out the window that I get to experience on our RV adventure...

 

...or how about this view!!!  RVing is definitely about the journey as well as the destination.

We knew that the road was going to start getting a little more "entertaining" once we drove through the "metropolis of Ouray."    Its a very, very small town.  Now the fun begins.

 

We got to travel through some interesting tunnels.  Doesn't look like the RV will make it but we actually had some room to spare...Pheww!

We also got to experience a new type of tunnel - an avalanche tunnel.

And then some more of those much needed relaxing sites of the rushing waters...

... and the beautiful mountains known as the red mountains.  The colors are just striking.

But the most exciting part of the ride (remember where I talked about "white knuckles"). Here is an example of some of the curves - that's not too bad...

 

 

 but take those curves and add some sharp drops and forget about the guard rail, forget about the shoulder - they don't even have the white lines at the side of the road - it just goes straight down and you get some white knuckles - and I wasn't even driving!

 

But we finally made it to our RV park.  You can imagine how concerned we were when this was the site we were assigned.  But, Mark, smart as he is, got out the align-a-site and figured out if we backed up a few feet our mid positioned roof top satellite could see over these trees and we would not miss Wimbledon or the US Open golf championship!!

 

 

The good news is that we are not that far from Durango, the front of the coach is well shaded, and this is our view out the side window.

 

And here is the full mountain- our Neighbor across from us is a painter and he spent many hours with his easel on his picnic table capturing this view.  I never saw the finished product :-(

 

 

Now we are ready to explore all that Durango has to offer!