Roadtrip Review: Colorado and East Utah, Pic Heavy

My wife, 2 kids (12 and 7) and I rolled out of BR around 2:30 on a Friday afternoon. When we left we only had Sunday, Monday and Tuesday nights booked. We were gone 9 nights and drove a little under 4k miles

We drove to Albuquerque and got a room on Saturday morning, took a nap a visited the town, there wasn't much that caught our interest.


There is a recap at the bottom.


Hotair ballons over Albuquerque on Sunday Morning





Got up early on Sunday morning, drove to 4 corners (intersection of Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico) Cost was $5 per person to the tribe and got a few pictures. We were close enough where I am glad we made the 30 minute stop. Next stop was Mesa Verde National Park. We had reservations at the hotel on the National Park for the night. We were able to get tour tickets to view one of the ancestral pueblo cliff dwelling locations on Sunday afternoon and the second site on Monday morning.

Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde



View from our room:



Wildlife at Mesa Verde:





Balcony House, you had to travel down stairs then up a ladder to enter Balcony House then had to climb out after the tour was completed.









After we left Mesa Verde on Monday morning, we stopped in Durango for Lunch then took the Million Dollar Hwy north to Telluride.

Molas Pass,10,910' part of the Million Dollar Hwy




We stayed in Telluride for Monday and Tuesday nights. The town was great and we didn't really have a lot of plans here. We ate well, and rested.



Origianl bar in one of the hotels from the 1800's



My daughter is turning 7 and wanted to white water rafter, the issue is she is small at less than 50lbs and options were limited. We headed west to Moab Utah to raft on the Colorado River and visit Arches Nation Park and Canyonlands National Park on Wednesday stayed in Moab Wednesday night and did a 1/2 day rafting trip on Thursday monring.


Arches National Park:








Canyonlands National Park:











Colorado River Rafting:






After rafting, we got on i-70 and headed east and got a room in Idaho Springs for the night (closest town to Mt. Evans) We did Mt. Evans and on Friday morning then headed north to Rocky Mountain National Park.

Mt Evans:



















Top of Mt. Evans, you can drive to 14,100' and a short hike to the top is 14,258.



Rocky Mountain National Park:

We saw a moose cow with 2 calves, another moose cow and a few elk.












After Rocky Mountain, we headed for home. Stopped in a little town in east Colorado along i-70 Friday night and then drove 18 hours to get home early Sunday morning.

Recap: The kids didn't dislike anything. We learned about the Passport for the National Parks where the kids can get stamps when they visit National Parks, they enjoyed this.

We learned about the GypsyGuide which uses the phone's GPS to give you info about the National Parks, it made the parks much more enjoyable.

Hiking was limited in the parks due to my young daughter and the heat but we list the parks as follows: Mesa Verde, Mt Evans, and Arches were ranked higher than Canyonlands and Rocky Mountain. Canyonlands was viewed on the same day as Arches and they were similar and Rocky Mountain was duplicated on all the other parks except for the moose and elk.

The Million Dollar Highway and the Drive up to Mt. Evans were both awesome.

In hindsight, the one thing we wished we would have taken the time to visit was the hot springs in Ouray.

The kids' favorite thing of the trip was the rafting even though the white water was more of a swift water than any real rapids. One section was rated as a class 3 and that was questionable. The guide was great and did his best to get us stuck on a rock in every stretch of rapids.