h&m: 08.09

Hege, the girls and I packed ourselves into Jay's mother-in-law's husband's truck for our drive from Sante Fe to Ouray. It took about 7 hours and was actually really smooth. Beautiful drive. We had a great time talking and catching up with Jay.

The old steam locomotive that runs from Durango, Co. up to Silverton. Silverton is the town just below Ouray.

Approaching Ouray (population approx. 850. elevation approx. 8000 ft.)

the road from Silverton to Ouray is famous for its switchbacks and sheer cliffs. Jay stayed really cool, but there were a few times when we couldn't believe what we were doing. Its highly discouraged to drive this road in winter.

there were many abandoned mining structures, (and evidence of mining - some of it drastic) dotted throughout the mountainsides. you see one at the bottom of the photo.

While Sean, Jay, Scott and I went camping in Moab, Utah for a few days, Hege and Jenny took the girls on a day hike in the mountains above Ouray. This was a real kid-friendly place called Baby Bathtubs where they spent an afternoon. The girls loved it. Its an area where mountain springs pool in shallow depressions in the exposed rock. The legend is that the local indians (Utes) bathed their children there.

Hennie at Baby Bathtubs. You could basically look down (a ways) from this general area into the Hart's backyard. Its impossible to overstate how dramatic the landscape is from Ouray.

Mette at Baby Bathtubs

Hennie, Hayden, Mette, and Mica at Baby Bathtubs

scrambling around at Baby Bathtubs

Mette and Jenny having a snack

Hayden Hart

Making pasta one day with Jenny

the main drag in Ouray. The Hart's house is directly behind the girls, framed by the space between their heads.

we grilled and ate out in the backyard pretty much every day. The kids really hit it off immediately and loved it there.

Mette in Ouray

Hennie and Mica. The house in the background is the neighboring house, which Sean's parents bought. They spend a few months or so there a year. Jay and Scott stayed there.

This is a hike we took with the kids and Sean up around the amphitheater of Ouray. This is looking back down at the town.

Hennie overlooking Ouray on our hike to Box Canyon Waterfall.

Ouray

looking down into Box Canyon

One day Jenny was nice enough to take all the kids with her to her regular workout so that Scott, Sean, Hege and I could do more strenuous hike up one of the peaks.

Sean, Hege, and Scott - up an old mining road

we maybe got up to 9500 ft. I forgot. I believe that the surrounding peaks are at about 11,000 ft. Regardless, we most definitely noticed the altitude.

on the way back down we turned around to see a Model T careening wildly down the mountain. The two guys inside were holding on with both hands AND their legs. They were having a ball, but the whole thing was crazy, since they had such precarious control of the thing. We'd passed many, many deadly drop-offs on our drive up (sean and jenny are on the local volunteer rescue team and have numerous stories of cars going off the edge up here. they've had to help evacuate some people and retrieve bodies. Jenny spent all day on a mountain rescue the day we arrived - a boulder broke loose at the top of a nearby peak and shattered across a popular trail, crushing a hikers foot and cutting him up. He had to be carried down to a flat area for helicopter evacuation. This sounds like a semi-regular occurrence - the Hart's have a 2-way radio in the house that they monitor during shifts).

Anyway, less than a minute after the Model went by, another very similar vintage car (but a roadster without the canopy) came thru. Those guys really were having a hard time keeping control, and they were very tense; not having a great time. They saw us and applied the handbrake to stop and ask about the terrain they were heading into and how far they had to go to get down. The driver had to really lean into the brake, straining to lock up the wheels, as the car seized up and went into a gentle lateral spin on the gravel before finally stopping. It was very tenuous. We half expected to see them at the bottom of a ravine on the way down.