When Nicholas told me when he was visiting I texted my good friend Anne, his cousin, and asked if she thought he would be interested in my surprise idea. She said, "Oh my gosh yes". So I kept this secret pretty well, until the night before at work I texted him saying, "Hey! Want to go to the bakery before we leave for Ouray tomorrow?"...
Well... I spilled the beans now didn't I. I tried saying it was a typo, but he knew. Thankfully he was still excited and really he had no idea what I had planned.
March 15th:
After I got done with work and got some sleep, we set out on the road to Ouray. Ouray is known as the "Switzerland of America". It is about 2 hours south of Grand Junction and in a valley of mountains. The difference with the mountains there compared to Junction is that they are much bigger, covered in snow, and the city is almost nestled into the bottom of these mountains, where as here there is much more land between the city and mountains. I had a few hikes in mind, but after doing research on them, I knew snow would be an issue.
We stopped at the visitor center right as we got into the city. We went inside and got some information on the Ouray Perimeter Trail. This trail goes all the way around Ouray...not kidding, the entire city. It is one of the most beautiful trails I have been on, but the snow became a bit of an issue. We found ourselves with snow up to our shins (in sneakers/trail runners), so we were pretty happy when we got to the following surprise at our hotel, which you'll find out about after the hiking photos.
We started hiking and the weather took a bit of a change. We both felt like we were back in New York, which was nice, but cold. Eventually the weather got better, thank goodness since we had about 6 miles to go.
In the picture above you can see the city of Ouray is settled in the mountains, colorful and peaceful.
Talk about a trail being cold and slippery!
After roughly 6 miles of hiking our stomachs were running empty, but mainly we were freezing! So we went to our hotel, Box Canyon Lodge & Hot Springs, where I get a discount from my hospital.
Our hotel had access to the Box Canyon Falls. The water can be so viscous during the summer, you could stand next to it and get soaked from it splashing out! At this time of the year there was ice, so we were able to walk almost right up to it.
Our hotel had private hot springs. We sat in them with a bottle of wine we bought wine tasting and enjoyed the views of the mountains around us. Once we were ready for dinner, it was already 8:30 pm. Not realizing that the restaurant we wanted to go to was already closed, we started walking to other places and found out a place called O'Brien's Pub & Grill was the only place open! We walked in and ordered more food than we probably needed. It was quite delicious after such a long, but amazing day.
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