Touring Southern Colorado, Part 1: Pagosa Springs

This post and the pictures I'm including here are a little bit dated, but I wanted to share a trip we took this summer with all of my dedicated readers :)

Back in the middle of July, the stars aligned with Dale's work (he had a two-week lull on his program), my work (I was waiting for someone to fix my glovebox), Grant's work (he was being laid off and his company didn't really care if he went to work anyway), and Jamie's pregnancy (she was still able to fly and was seeing her doctor only every two weeks). Rather than just talking about what we might all do with our free time, we actually acted on it and took a ten-day vacation together in southern Colorado.

Our first stop was Pagosa Springs, which was a pretty neat small town -- in the mountains, with a sulfur spring in the middle of the town and several nearby hikes. The most memorable part of Pagosa Springs was "Vince Guitar," a waiter at a Cajun restaurant that we almost walked out of before we even sat down (it had a bit of a dank to it). Instead, we decided to stick it out and each ordered something different from the menu. And wow! it was amazingly good! The etouffee, the okra, the gumbo, the catfish, the sausage, it was all soooooo good. "Vince" made it even better with his antics, like proclaiming that he was the best thing on the menu and offering me himself, drenched in etouffee. A good time was had by all that night.

We took one long hike near Pagosa Springs,
up a canyon to a gorgeous waterfall. Although she was very pregnant at the time, Jamie did great, and of course Adelaida loved sleeping in her backpack on her daddy's back.

Pagosa Springs also has a very nice wild animal park that we visited, and we were lucky enough to be there at the time of their daily feeding tour. We saw a brown bear, several black bears, coyotes, wolves, an elk, mountain lions, and several other animals being fed. The keeper talked to us about the different animals and several of them performed tricks for us before they were fed.



Dale and Adelaida are ready to find the waterfall.


If you look really closely in this picture, you can see Dale (wearing a blue shirt) and Adelaida (wearing white), just to the right of the base of the waterfall, framed by a darker patch of rock.


This is another of my favorite pictures of Dale and Adelaida, taken on our Pagosa Springs hike. I have this picture set as my computer background on my home computer.