A Drive on the Million Dollar Highway, Colorado

We pack up and get an early start today. We have a long drive through the mountains.

But as we drive through Montrose we see the Russell Stover Candy outlet store (they appear to have a factory behind the store), so we end up spending 45 minutes at the store and buy way too much candy.

I'm not sure if it's the beautiful sunny day or the fact that I ate lots of free chocolate candy samples at the Russell Stover Store, but the scenery today is wonderful! We drive route 550, also known as "The Million Dollar Highway". It is an incredible road that goes through the San Juan Mountain Range between Ouray, Silverton and Durango, Colorado.

I really like the town of Ouray and tell Jere and Joe that we should move there :-) It's a relatively small town with some wonderfully restored old buildings and is totally surrounded by tall mountains.

The road over the mountain coming out of Ouray is scary, and I try not to look over the side of the road: no guardrails and some very steep drop-offs. However, the scenery is incredible.

Not sure how well this photo shows the drop off beside the road, but here is my attempt to show the lack of guardrails and the steep drop off. I take the photo by sticking my arm out the window and snapping :-) It's a long way down:

We pass several deserted mines during our drive today:

We stop along the road above Silverton and have some lunch.

Then continue our scenic drive to Durango before turning east through the Rio Grande Mountains along the Rio Grand River. More incredible scenery.

We stop at one roadsite rest where there is a waterfall and there are lots of little chipmunks. This one chipmunk walked over towards me and started eating the flower near my foot.

We leave the mountains and continue to the Alamosa KOA. Long day of driving, so we have a late dinner and relax around the campground for the remainder of the night.