Day 5 – The Million Dollar Highway

Megan’s Take

Today was a road trip day! We decided to travel the Million Dollar Highway to Silverton and Ouray. While Emmett and Emilia don’t really appreciate a scenic drive like we do, they were cooperative and kept themselves busy in the truck. We drove straight to Ouray with beautiful views all along the way, but I tried not to look down outside my window too much.

There are many places where there’s not much of a shoulder, and the road just drops off at the edge.

When we got to Ouray, we made a mistake. We thought we would take a quick 2.2 mile *easy* river walk downtown (Uncompahgre River Walk) with the kids at 11 am before lunch. We have decided to never start a hike at that time without feeding our children first. They were low energy, and Emmett fell at the very beginning, scraping his hand.

He was very whiny about that and any number of other things during our walk. BUT the river walk was beautiful, and it was the highlight of my day – especially because there were so many beautiful rocks for us to collect!

Finding easy river access with plentiful rocks was an unexpected surprise, and we all did some hunting. Thankfully, we had a backpack, because Emilia and I had quite a haul, while Emmett and Phil picked out a few special rocks. I got a workout carrying all of it about 1.5 miles back to the truck.

We got lunch and ice cream in downtown Ouray and then headed back to Silverton. We visited the Christ of the Mines shrine, which was another unexpected surprise. We just happened to see a sign for it along the road, and it was worth the detour. It was an inspiring place to stop and say a few prayers. 

After all that, the kids were ready to head back to the campground. The campground pool is open for the season, so I took them for a short swim. They were so excited to go swimming! I was not crazy about swimming when it’s only 75 degrees and breezy, but the water is heated to 80 degrees. Emilia enjoyed showing off what she’s learned from her swimming lessons, and Emmett even got into the water. He’s usually averse to the water, so I’m excited that he’s getting interested. I’m hoping to be able to sign him up for swimming lessons after our trip.

Phil’s Take

While I will agree with Megan that the river walk was awesome, my favorite was the drive. I didn’t have nearly the anxiety Megan did, and I was driving. Most of the pictures we have were taken while driving, and while I was able to clean most of them up, they could be better. Oh well, is better than none at all.

It wasn’t far into our drive that we came across the first vista that gave us this panoramic view.

It wasn’t long after that when we saw this crazy operator with an excavator on a very steep incline.

I was under the impression that the best parts of the drive were between Silverton and Ouray, but we happen upon the next vista, which I thought was the best view of the whole day, at Molas Pass before we reached Silverton.

I really wish the pictures could do it justice. We came upon Silverton next, nestled at the bottom of the valley, but we continued on past.

On past Silverton the views did not disappoint.

We stopped at an interpretive area for the mines next, and you can see the boards in the gallery below, before heading further toward Ouray. Along the way I had to tell Megan that this pile of rocks was too big.

As we continued, the road winded more and the cliffs were sheer.

You can see here how little space there was between the edge of the road and the cliffs.

I won’t rehash what Megan said about it river walk ice we reached Ouray, but I will add that I ended up carrying our little whiny plumber most of the way on my shoulders.

Our view at lunch was awesome.

On our way back to Durango, Megan was right at the edge of the road. I know the pictures don’t do it justice, but here’s a taste of her view out the window of the truck.

When we stopped at that shrine Megan mentioned, I captured this panorama of the city.

Finally we made it back to Molas lake and captured one more view before returning to the campground.

Here’s the whole gallery of pictures for today.