Return to Black Canyon and a visit from Dean's parents!

Because we're determined to wring out as much as possible from our stint in the Southwest (and because of the fact that I am absolutely incapable of passing up a good coupon), we made another trip to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Montrose, Colorado at the end of October. I found a coupon for a hotel - excuse me, a hot springs resort - that we never would have been able to afford otherwise, and we got to spend a weekend in Colorado pretending that we were a young wealthy couple from Albuquerque who had decided to spend a weekend at a resort on a whim.  Given the fact that I shamelessly marched in carrying a rice cooker and packs of instant ramen (eating out every night gets expensive!), I don't think we fooled anyone. Oh well.

Our favorite part of the room was our private porch overlooking the San Juan mountains. Thankfully, this time they weren't entirely snowed over, so the drive was a lot less nerve-wracking.

We got up the next morning to drink our coffee on the porch and watch a truly glorious sunrise.

It gets REALLY cold that early in the morning when you're in the mountains. 

Then we made our way to Montrose to do the remaining trails at the Black Canyon that we were snowed out of last time.  What a beautiful place!

Two of my favorite things: the Black Canyon and Dean!

The rest of the day we spent splashing around in the hotel's ritzy hot springs/pool, and contemplating the awkwardly placed window in our room that looked directly into the bathroom.

Looks like their interior designer called in sick the day they did windows. 

We had it all to ourselves!

Dean and I decided this definitely fell under the category of a "Laurie-and-Reuben kind of hotel."

The last day we spent hiking outside of Ouray, Colorado, a tiny little place tucked right in the middle of the San Juans. We did the Bear Creek Trail, named after the waterfall it wrapped around, and was one of the coolest hikes we've ever done!

Bear Creek Falls

 The only bad part of the trip was that after said beautiful hike, I thought it would be a good idea to take my hiking boots off in the trailhead parking lot and leave them there. We didn't even realize they were missing until we got back to Albuquerque. Oops...

But our fun didn't stop there - we had one weekend to recover from our trip to Colorado before the Hayes came to Albuquerque! We took them on a whirlwind tour of all our favorite places in New Mexico: Chaco Canyon, Santa Fe, and White Sands.

Our first stop were the Pueblo Indian ruins at Chaco Canyon - heaven for a couple of anthropology majors like me and Dean, with some beautiful desert hiking included as an added benefit.

 The weather was constantly shifting all around us - we got to see rainstorms falling a few miles in every direction, but we were lucky enough to avoid being rained on.  Lisa got a great panoramic shot of us against the clouds, and the double rainbow that emerged when we reached Pueblo Alto!

 

 

On Saturday we went to Santa Fe and spent the day on the Plaza, shopping and watching Texas A&M pull out a surprise win against Alabama at the Blue Corn Cafe.  We had dinner at La Casa Sena (thanks to Laurie and Reuben for taking us there the first time!) and then had to head home to get ready for the next big day!  Early the next morning we dragged them down to Alamogordo to go see White Sands National Park. I'm going to make these pictures obnoxiously big to show off how cool the landscape is.

White Sands or Antarctica?

  

Displaying my usual grace. 

We had such an amazing weekend, and were so happy to have some folks from home come visit our new stomping grounds.  It was such a fun treat, but now that they're gone we miss them more than ever.