Saturday, October 2, 2010

Anniversary Weekend in Ophir

Well two years has honestly flown by. In that two years we had a great honeymoon, a big move to Colorado, and a new edition to the family. In those years we also had many great hikes. So I thought we could return to the place where I hiked on my first trip out to Colorado near the tiny town of Ophir. The first issue was finding it. We were lucky to have a GPS because even though it was fairly close to Telluride, there were absolutely no road signs for it. Then once we got to the town, there were absolutely no signs for trailheads. We were lucky enough to park and find a trailhead. After feeding the little one, I strapped her on and we were ready for a hike. The trail took us first across a little creek and then up an old road. Zyla was so happy to be hiking and had a giant grin on her toothless face. She really loves to go hiking. There were quite a few people out considering there were no signs for this random trail. The trail took us uphill through some aspen forest which was very nice at this time of year. I wanted to take Jacqueline out here because how much she loved the fall color and I just knew that this place would be full of at least some yellows. We were almost a little bit too late as some of the leaves were gone on some of the trees. Eventually the trail popped us out above the trees, but it also popped us into some private land. There were no trespassing signs up, so we thought that we would obey them. There were quite a few junctions, so eventually we found the right one that took us up the hillside to the other side of the valley. From there we had some good views and we also had to take some time out of our day to feed the baby again since we had been hiking for a while and she was getting hungry again. We found a nice place to sit and enjoy the perfect weather outside. We knew it would not be too long before t-shirts would be exchanged for the down jacket. We kept running into the same couple who were trying to make a full day out of this hike. They talked to another group that said the trail we were on headed toward the post office. Almost immediately we said that we did not want to go down that way, but after thinking about it, I figured we could make a loop out of it. When I realized later that the post office was a long way down the road, I was happy we chose to turn around. We still had excellent views down towards the mountains of Ophir. We could see the road coming down from Ophir Pass, the crazy road that scared me when my dad drove it 13 years ago. Once back to the car, we headed down the road to the town of Rico. We stayed at the Rico Hotel, which I would not recommend because the place was rickety and you could hear everything that was going on in the place. We had a good dinner, the baby was awesome, but I did not get great sleep. Still I had a fun weekend with the wife who I know I could not do it here without. She has been an amazing mother and wife, I could not ask for more. I know there will be many more anniversary trips to look forward to in the coming years.

3 comments:

Brian Hays said...

Oh yah, da baby bjorn its great for makin' de hot bread up north ya know. Bjorn's make da best hot bread oofta.

Anonymous said...

It's very appropriate that Ophir should be hard to find. I'm reading a book about the Bible and in there Ophir has some really good gold, but nobody now knows where it was - my author thinks it was Yemen. -Dad

Unknown said...

What a GREAT anniversary weekend! I loved the fall color and would love to visit this area again in the fall. Zyla really enjoyed herself :) Glad she slept well. I thought I was in college again. The hotel was charming and beautiful, but VERY noisy! Did people stay up partying? I think I would have been okay with that if they shared their wine :)
-Jacqueline