Stop sign on the road where Michelle and her husband Jeff live. La Plata County Road 101 can be seen on the left side of the picture. Michelle and Jeff's place is just beyond the trees on the right side of the road.
Public artesian well on County Road 101. To prevent the local water table from being over-tapped, there are zoning regulations preventing the digging of new wells. Michelle's house was built before the regulations went into effect and has its own well.
Michelle with an ex-race horse. As a result of its former life on the race track, the thoroughbred has the habit of holding its head high which is apparently bad form so Michelle is training it to keep its head lower and to use its back muscles for support. The blue lines connecting the muzzle to the saddle are meant to discourage the horse from picking up its head.
Here is Jeff and his Icelandic horse. North American horses evolved as animals of prey which is why they are so skittish; in Iceland the horses had no natural enemies and consequently they evolved into mellow dudes.
Headquarters of 1st Class Internet Solutions. Jeff's business is located in the Frontier Internet building in downtown Durango, CO. When Jeff and Michelle were looking at office space in the building, the Frontier.net staff took them on a tour. When Michelle saw Frontier.net's server closet and machine rack, which were small compared to those found in Microsoft labs, she irritated them by remarking, "Oh, how cute!"
Durango is the place to go for mountain biking. If you go, your mountain bike must have a shock absorber on the front wheel or you will die. I borrowed Jeff's bike which had such a shock absorber and even with it I nearly died. Here is the entry road for one of the chief mountain biking areas.
I spent most of my vacation hiking. One of the mountains I climbed was 14,309 foot Uncompahgre Peak in Colorado's San Juan range. I took this picture on September 25th, late enough in the season that snow was already beginning to cover the terrain. The hike from the trailhead to summit is 16 miles round trip with 3,600 feet elevation gain and involves a detour around the ridge seen on the right side of the picture so as to avoid the cliffs and approach the mountain from the other side. I decided to take a shortcut and shave off two miles by ascending via the big notch in the ridge.
Here is the view from the summit looking back towards the valley from which I approached.
Here is another picture taken from the summit of Uncompahgre looking at the mountains of the San Juan range.
What I learned from this vacation is that if all you have is a rental Ford Escort economy car, that shouldn't stop you from getting to trailheads to enjoy the backcountry. You can scrape and grind the bottom of the car against the rocks on those pothole-ridden back roads and so long as you don't actually rupture one of the car's vital organs it doesn't matter because when you return it to the rental agency, all they check for is that you haven't damaged the paint job.