Trip to Ridgway, CO
The drive to Ridgway was about five hours from Colorado Springs and we left at 9 AM right after a quick walk with the dogs to soak up the last view of the Garden Of The Gods. On the road, we grabbed some Starbucks and were quite surprised! For the first time in months (since quarantine started), we was able to go to Starbucks without a line of 40 people wrapped around the corner of the building. We were in and out within 10 minutes! Maybe Coloradans are just not as into Starbucks as Texans willing to wait an hour for a cup of coffee?
The drive to Ridgway was beautiful and filled awesome views, deer, and bison. I almost hit a deer as three crossed the road right in front of my Jeep. Thankfully, I was able to stop in time!
Ridgway is nestled in between a whole bunch of mountains and we were very excited to call Ridgway home for the week. We ended up checking into our VRBO right on time at 3 PM. We were staying in the bottom half of a house that looked over the mountains in a tiny little neighborhood. The population of Ridgeway is just over a thousand and the town was very quite and quaint.
Since she can’t go on long, long walks, we left Dakota (our 13 year old pup) at the house with a bone and drove to the Ridgway reservoir area to walk some trails. Dixie was having fun playing in the streams and got super muddy but it was definitely worth the beautiful walk along the river side.
We walked for about an hour and then dropped Dixie back off at the house so we could grab groceries for the week. With masks on, we went to this tiny little market on the main road in town and it had everything we needed to make a southwestern veggie bake and pasta. We also grabbed some things for breakfast and for lunch. After that we headed back to the house and I made my southwestern bake with sweet potato, bell and poblano peppers, ground beef, diced tomatoes, cilantro, and cheese. It turned out really great! We ate dinner, watched the sunset over the mountains, and enjoyed dessert port out of some coffee mugs (wine glasses were MIA).
We ended up talking “up” to the couple that owned the house from their balcony and they were very nice! A few hours later, we got a knock on the door and our host came down and gave us freshly baked cookies. That was so nice! We had a great sleep and we’re ready to work in the morning.
Ridgway, Day 2:
I brought my monitor from home and set it up on the kitchen table to look out over the mountains while I worked. The dogs hung out in the house and Ryan worked in the bedroom with another beautiful view of the mountains. The Wi-Fi worked so we didn’t have any issues with attending meetings or anything like that (thank goodness)! Day one of working from the house went really well and we took the dogs a nice long walk after work.
There were a bunch of kids playing in the park area with Nerf guns right next to our fence. Ridgway is a very family friendly area. Our hosts told us that we would hear “howling” around 8 PM. Apparently, the town passed an ordinance prohibiting dogs from howling and so, in protest, every night at 8 PM the kids and parents howl from their balconies for about a minute! It was really funny, kind of strange, and we liked it!
Ridgway, Day 3 –
We woke up the next morning to a text from our hosts saying that there was construction on the transformer to the house and we may not have power or internet for two hours! When the whole point of our trip was to “work from someone else’s home” and we had to be on video conference calls, not having Internet for two hours was a huge deal! We were stressing like crazy. Thankfully, we were able to acquire the neighbors Wi-Fi password and we had enough charge on our batteries to last us. The two hour outage turned into 4 1/2! Talk about a bit of a stressful morning. Fortunately, our work was not impacted and we got everything done using the resources we had.
After a bit of a stressful day we decided that we would take a walk into town with the dogs. It was only about a mile and there’s a beautiful park in the town. We opted to try Gnar Tacos for dinner and ordered at the window. We took the tacos over to the park and ate while our dogs chewed on grass (apparently they are cows, not dogs). The tacos were absolutely delicious! We tried the bulgogi, Phuket (like Thailand!), and Ahi tuna tacos. They were all really interesting with bursts of flavor. It was a great way to end our last night in Ridgeway. We walked back and enjoyed the views mountains and then relaxed and watch some Netflix the rest of the evening.
Ridgway, Day 4 –
Our last day in Ridgeway consisted of a dog walk in the morning, working from our VRBO until about 4 PM, and then the drive to Santa Fe. The drive was about five hours at the most beautiful views we have ever seen. We drove through Ouray, this town nestled in these mountains that was absolutely astonishing. It was probably the most beautiful town we’ve ever seen in our entire lives. We almost stayed in Ouray too but they didn’t have any dog friendly Airbnbs. We will definitely be returning there as the town was incredible.
The rest of the drive was mainly uphill, past mountains with waterfalls gushing down their sides as the snow melt ran down. It was, again, absolutely fabulous to watch. The views continued as the mountains turned into desert land with mesas as we drove from Colorado into New Mexico. It was starting to get dark and rainy. All of a sudden, huge rainbows appeared! It made me so happy to see the giant rainbows with such vibrant bursts of color. It was a really cool thing to behold as we went into the darkness of the night and drove into Santa Fe.
Our Airbnb in Santa Fe was pretty cute. It was off of the main area, but it was still centrally located to all the things I wanted to do. We got in around 10 PM, quickly unpacked the bags and dogs, and called it a night. We almost died of heat, as the Airbnb didn’t have air-conditioning or a fan, but I guess Texas has trained us well!
Santa Fe, NM
We only had one day to enjoy Santa Fe. Thankfully, we had been to Santa Fe many times before to ski. This time, we were headed back to the Ski Santa Fe area, but to hike! We drove up, up, and up for 30 minutes or so to the ski area to the trail head for Nambe Lake. Dixie was all ready with her backpack and we headed up the trail. It was so, so steep! The higher we got, the more snow we saw. Towards the very top, there was so much snow that my leg fell through some parts all the way up to my leg! It was pretty fun to hike through that though. Dixie had no idea what was going on but could not have been happier.
The hike was 7 miles and basically all uphill for a total of a 2K elevation gain! We were huffing and puffing but the view from the lake was 100% worth it. We had some snacks while enjoying the view of the lake and rested for about 20 minutes before going back down.
The downhill part of the hike was SO MUCH easier! Once we got back to the car, we drove back to the AirBNB to change and go out for lunch. We got some take out Mexican food and enjoyed our lunch on a park bench in the middle of the Santa Fe square.
After that, we took off to Canyon Road to visit the galleries. There are over one hundred galleries around Canyon Road and, lucky for us, they had just reopened days before we got to Santa Fe. We bought our first real piece of art on Canyon Road on our first ski trip there years ago. We had some serious nostalgia and were basically the only ones walking around with the galleries to ourselves. We didn’t buy anything this time.
After Canyon Road, we were exhausted. We grabbed some gyros from a Mediterranean place and popped a bottle of wine to enjoy the rest of our night at the AirBnb.
The next morning, we were up early to drive back to Dallas. Not being able to travel during Covid-19 has been very stressful so having our little get-away week made a huge difference for our mental health and created some wonderful memories.
The Impatient Traveler 