Colorado Springs to Durango

Saturday 5th September 2009...


Sadly we wake up on our last morning at this fantastic resort. We all go for breakfast on the terrace up at the main building, there are a lot more people here now due to the influx of families of the air force dudes for the passing out ceremonies this weekend. Still we have had the whole place almost to ourselves for the past few days so to see some new people is good.


Ok, off to see if we can get a photo of us at the entrance to the NORAD Cheyenne Mountain base, not much luck there, as we suspected, there are signs and barriers warning us we will be strung up by our privates and incarcerated in Gitmo for even looking in their general direction. Still, the strange news is that we have been waking up to the view of Cheyenne Mountain for the past four days, it is the one in our room view pics that has the mass of ariels spouting out of the top.

We had a wonderful journey through the different terrains of Colorado, what a fascinating state....scrubland and desert almost, with a very Mexican architectural feel to it, complete with diners selling lethal chilli burgers and having old cattle skulls on the walls, to the almost "South Fork Dallas" style ranches set in the valleys between magnificent mountains, to small towns with old worlde wood houses with chairs on porches selling new age boho "nick nacks", home-made cakes, fresh bread and coffee and other wonderful goods...

Jon turned the radio on and we only found two stations, one had us in stitches, it sounded like a Mexican/ Swiss fusion with all the usual guitars and stuff added to Tyrolean accordian riffs, it was magic. The roads are pretty empty apart from hundreds and hundreds of bikers, I wonder if there is something going on somewhere for the labor day weekend.

The terrain closer to Durango is mountainous splendour, it is Jaw droppingly picturesque. We stop at a lay-by right on the edge of a 1000 foot drop overlooking a valley (see pic at top). There is a gang of ageing bikers and a couple of lasses from Australia there. Apart from the views there are loads chipmunks scrabbling about for food, quite a sight.

On to Durango and the sat nav messes up for the first time, we end up at an out of town motel. Jon goes into a shop and finds the directions to the Doubletree, 10 mins later we arrive. Now we now where all the bikers are at, there are hundreds of them. This stopover should be fun.