Lake City Bound!

One of my favorite weekends had FINALLY arrived - the trip to Lake City! Even though I was still under the weather, nothing was going to detour me from having a GREAT time on this trip!

It didn't start out so great though........ I had a horrible night's sleep - coughing, runny nose, sinus drainage - it was almost a pleasure to get up at 6:00, knowing the day HAD to get better! We loaded the car and were out the door by 6:30am! I was excited at the thought of stopping in Gunnison for breakfast - a couple years before we had stopped at a great little place to eat breakfast and I KNEW that's where I wanted to eat! Unfortunately, everybody else had the same thought! The line was out the door - and we just didn't want to hang around for an hour and wait for a table - so we drive around the town TRYING to find another restaurant to eat at - no such luck - I couldn't believe in a town that size that there was NOTHING else open!! But I was starving and we had to eat - so it was a McDonald's breakfast which ranks about a minus 1 on my list of places to eat - oh well............

The drive over was gorgeous - absolutely gorgeous! And we pulled into Lake City late morning and stopped at a campground where friends Dick and Jane were at - they had pulled their 5th wheel over, along with a trailer with 2 motorcycles! They were ready to head up Engineer Pass and wanted us to go along - I was game, even though I wasn't feeling great, so I changed into some jeans, threw a sweatshirt and coat on, packed a LOT of kleenex and off we went!!

Luckily Glenn knows how to drive a motorcycle and he did a great job, even though the bike was a little large for him - he has short legs so couldn't touch the ground and that made it a little more difficult for taking off and stopping - but he managed well!!

The air was cool but the sun was out and soon we were heading past old mining camps, stopping every once in a while to check them out, and seeing all this unbelieveable gorgeous scenary!! The aspens were beautiful - but as you can tell from the pictures, they were in 3 different stages - the trees were either still green and hadn't changed yet, gold, or completely bare (meaning the leaves had already dropped off!) Aspens are touchy trees and some years are more beautiful than others - this was a good year but not some of the best that I've seen in the past!

It kept getting colder and colder as we climbed higher and higher and soon we were above tree line - Glenn and I dubbed it Tibet as it's so barren with nothing around for miles!! Was it cold up there at 12,800 elevation??? You bet it was!! The wind was blowing so hard that I had a tough time holding the camera still!! We didn't waste much time up there - took a few pictures and headed back down the mountain!

There are a few private places up in the mountains and this particular house was something else! Check out how you GET to the house! That's right - you park on one side of the ravine and walk across this bridge to get there!! We haven't figured out how the house was built - maybe a helicopter brought all of the materials in?

All in all it was a perfect day - but by the time we got back down the mountain, I was more than ready to drive out to our cabin and relax!

To be continued............