South-Western US Road Trip: 1/4/22

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Day 19

Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah

We left our hotel in Durango and headed for Telluride. Instead of taking the faster way, we decided to drive the million-dollar highway (a more scenic route). It was a beautiful drive, and the roads luckily were dry. Along the way, we stopped at the Ouray Ice Park. It is a river canyon that the town sprays with water creating a multitude of icicles, and attracts many ice climbers. After leaving the awesome spot, we continued on to Telluride. Once there, the free public gondola was our destination. We boarded on the edge of the city and rode it up to the highest (next) station. We got off there and walked around a restaurant located at the top. It had a room full of slippers for ski/snowboarders to wear while they left their equipment in the room. After that, we boarded the gondola again, and this time continued on to the town of Mountain Village, where we caught another gondola, and something called the Chondola because it had a gondola car spaced roughly every 6 chair lift seats. Eventually, after many more rides, we arrived back at our car and attempted to drive to a lake. The road was closed though, so we then continued on to Four Corners. We got there just before closing, took some pictures, then left planning to drive as far as we could toward Great Sand Dunes National Park. We ended up staying in Alamosa.

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