Fall Trip - Day 1

 It's my favorite time of year and one of my favorite trips of the year - leaf peeping in Colorado!!  Because we were STILL having issues with the razor, we decided to not take the ATV - we would just drive the car and stay in a cabin or hotel.  By the time we figured all of this out, there wasn't a lot of choices of where to book so Glenn suggested we stay in Paonia, driving a couple of passes that first day!  So that's where I booked!

We headed out early Tuesday morning and ate at Jan's in Buena Vista for breakfast - always good food!  And then it was over Cottonwood Pass and over to Kebler Pass, one of my favorite places for leaves!  There's always traffic on Kebler but since it was a week day it wasn't too bad!

The colors were gorgeous and the picture below is MY favorite of the entire trip!  I love taking photos when there's a little bit of snow on the mountains!

We drove up to Lost Lake - there's a campground up there and it's a beautiful spot!

We headed to Paonia mid-afternoon and it was a lovely drive!  I had NO IDEA where I had booked a place to stay - only that it was located on a fruit farm and it was to the side of a house!  But I had no service whatsoever - and later found out that Verizon does NOT work at all around there - interesting!

SO we went into town and I got enough service sitting outside a restaurant that I could google the address and figure out where it was!  Of course we had driven right by it so we didn't have far to go out of town to find it!   I was so surprised when we pulled in to discover there were several small cabins too!

It was beautiful there - the owner met us as soon as we pulled in and he was very nice!  We found our place just to the side of the large house (which actually turned out to be common area for everyone but since we were only 1 of 2 couples staying there, we had it all to ourselves!  Inside was a complete kitchen and living room and game room)  

Our place was so cute and very nice - with a living room that looked out onto the large deck in front and a little galley kitchen and a bedroom with a window seat - I was thrilled!

We walked out to the center of the property where there is a great place for a campfire and sitting at picnic tables, etc!  It was beautiful!

The owner had given us a list of places to eat in town and I had looked up some before we came - but unfortunately, getting food in this town isn't easy!!!!  Besides a restaurant that had NOTHING that looked appetizing to eat, the only other open place for dinner was a pizza place - and then we found out it was closed for remodeling!   OH MY!!  But we knew there was a food truck in town and we DID find it - it was a pizza place- wonderful!!!  We ordered just a medium supreme - I was aghast at the price of $28.00 for it!  OH well!!   And Glenn wanted a beer so we found the liquor store and got him beer and me a Mike's - since they had told us 1/2 hour to 45 min on the pizza, Glenn took me home so I could get the drinks nice and cold and he went back and picked up the pizza!   Dinner on the front deck was VERY nice - the pizza was delicious - but the drinks were not very cold!    The owner joined us for drinks and lots of talking!

So a very nice first day of our trip!!!