Trip Out West 2010 (Week 3)

We have now been traveling for 3 weeks and nearly 4900 miles! After we left Albuquerque we stopped at the Pecos NHP and Ft. Union NM. Both were interesting historically. We camped at Sugarite Canyon in NM just south of the CO line. The temperatures were in the 20s at night and it was extremely windy. The next day we visited Capulin Volcano NM and walked the 1 mile trail around it's rim. It is amazing to see the far reaching effects this extinct volcano had on the surrounding landscape. We then spent that night in the San Luis Lake SP in CO and it was again in the low 20s and VERY windy. The Great Sand Dunes NP was on the agenda for the next day but we were a little disappointed that we could not get out on the dunes. The spring runoff had the creek bed in front of the dunes pretty full and, unlike several others, we did not feel like wading through the COLD water to walk on them. A fresh pure creek backed by huge sand dunes and snow capped mountains made for some fantastic scenery though. We slowly pulled our little trailer up over the San Juan mountains and stopped at Treasure Falls. There was new snow up in the mountains. We left CO and camped that evening near the Aztec Ruins National Monument in NM and toured the ruins (which are not AZTEC Indian ruins at all). The next day we visited the Chaco Culture NM and learned that these Pueblo Indian Ancestral ruins are related to those at the Aztec NM, Mesa Verde NP and Canyon De Shelly NM. On May 3 we drove to Durango, CO and rode the Durango Silverton Narrow Guage Train and saw some unbelievable canyon scenery along the Animas river. See the map below to follow us on our trip and see pictures of week 3.

Pictures of Week 3 are at this link
http://community.webshots.com/user/rvburroughs5

See the map below to follow our adventures.
Zoom in and click on an icon to see where we have been.