Day 10

"On the tenth day of Christmas my three men gave to me, ten scary mountain passes, nine dollars to visit Four Corners, eight sandstone hoodoos, seven amazing vistas, six petrified wood chips, five Indian dwellings, four yummy tacos, three spinning windmills, two fighting boys, and an exciting road trip for our family..."

Okay so there weren't exactly ten mountain passes, but they sure were scary! We drove from Durango, Co to Gunnison and the whole way was mountainous. There were restrictions on 2/3 of the passes making chains or 4wd mandatory. Red Mountain Pass was the scariest. It is a two lane road with a steep 1,000 foot drop off the side and no guard rails. The road was covered with packed snow and ice. Let me tell you, that is NOT a good combination. However, obviously, we made it safely to Gunnison, CO on Sunday night.

On our way to Gunnison we stopped at Black Canyon of the Gunnison NP. The pictures don't show how dramatic it was. It was beautiful.

In Gunnison we took the kids ice skating! It was so cool. We skated on a pond for a couple hours that night. The kids were really good at it. They ended up playing tag with 5 or so kids that were there. I, on the other hand, had only been ice skating twice before this. I did just fine, but I am sure that it was pretty ugly! In my defense, John's skating was pretty ugly too. =) I thought that it was really cool that you can skate for free though and skate rentals were only $3 for as long as you wanted.

This is a herd of elk that we saw off the side of the road.