A road trip, a hike, some good food and an ATV ride

Kenny took the day off today and we headed North out of Silverton to Ouray and Ridgway, Colorado. Between Silverton and Ouray (Red Mountain Pass) we stopped at the Bear Creek trailhead and did a little hiking. I was super sore from yesterday's Body Pump class, so we just hiked a mile or so out and then the same back. The trail was in good condition in spots at first, but a lot of it later on was loose, crumbly slate. The trail kept climbing upwards and with my achy condition and the slate-type scree, I figured it would be unsafe to push it.

If you look really close, you can see me heading up the slate trail with the long drop-off:

After the hike, we headed back and went on down the road to Ouray. We checked out all the local shops, including Ouray Gallery, which is carrying some of Kenny's artwork. We picked up some dark chocolate coconut haystacks at the local chocolate store for an after-lunch treat.

On to Ridgway we went for the sole purpose of eating lunch at the local Oriental restaurant (Spicy Thai Basil fried rice in particular). It was wonderful.

Nice and full, we went back to Ouray and got all geared up to take the 4-wheeler out. We headed down the jeep road towards Imogene Pass. We had camped there on our honeymoon 8 years ago; we were remembering feeding apples to the deer and how good the prime rib was over the campfire that night. We got to the top of Imogene Pass after almost an hour of riding today. There were 2 gals hiking the road up to the pass, training for the Imogene Pass run, being held the following weekend. I'd like to do that one some day, but I think it would be a pretty hard race (17 miles, up and over Imogene Pass from Ouray to Telluride). They didn't look like they were having much fun. :) We did see a marmot on the way; they are really cute little critters that make squealing sounds that drive dogs so crazy they are forced to chase them.
After coming back down from the pass, we headed over to Yankee Boy Basin, which was beautiful.

Our ATV ride lasted about 4 hours, which was a blast. We got back to Silverton in time to make some pesto tortellini with broccoli for dinner and we went to bed tired and content!