If you don't like the mountains, skip this post!

Finally! Some pictures of our vacation last week. Forty-six photos with minimum commentary--the perfect vacation post!

Our trip started out in Santa Fe, New Mexico.


I took very few pics. A couple of these are of the kids walking the prayer labyrinth at this cathedral. Santa Fe is gorgeous. My only disappointment was that we didn't get to eat at The Shed because we were there on the one day of the week it is closed. 

From there we drove to Durango, CO. We rented this cabin for the week. 

We found it through this site (Vacation Rentals By Owner). John has used this website several times to find cabin rentals and we really can't say enough great things about it. 

A few pics of the interior.

Our view from the deck--overlooking Lemon Reservoir. Gorgeous. If you click on the picture to enlarge it you can probably see some of the bare trees and damage from the Missionary Ridge Fire in 2002. (On the left side of the ridge). 

The kids loved playing outside. They especially loved the fire pit and feeding the healthy population of chipmunks.
We had a rainy week, but one night John got a fire going and we made s'mores!

And one morning we drove down to the reservoir and let the kids do some fishing. We didn't catch a thing and we got rained out to boot.

The highlight of our trip was a train ride on the Narrow Guage Railroad from Durango to Silverton. Everyone got a train ticket from John's parents on their birthday this year! Before we left for the train station on the morning of our ride, all the kids sang "Happy Birthday" to us all. Cute.

The train is pulled by a steam engine so we had several water stops along the way. 

By the way, all of the really good pics of the train ride (and all the other good ones in this post) were taken by John's brother. He has an awesome camera and I'm thankful he shared them with us!

Yeah, don't stick your head too far out the train windows!!! The distance between rock and train got even narrower than this pic reveals!

The train stopped in Silverton and we had time to eat lunch and do some quick shopping. It was a LONG day. It took about 3.5 hours to get to Silverton and the same amount of time to get back. The scenery was amazing though!

We also spent some time in downtown Durango. 

LOVED this car. Because I love Life is Good stuff. 

We decided to take the scenic route home and detour through Ouray, CO. 

OH. MY. GOSH. That was the most gorgeous drive. In fact, I think that southwest Colorado may have surpassed my beloved Estes Park as my favorite place in the state. It was THAT beautiful. See?

The two pics above were taken at the top of Molas Pass. 

(Don't know who the biker dude is, but he didn't seem to be leaving and John said it would be rude to ask him to move for my pic.)

Now tell me...is this not the most amazing scenery? I want this to be the view from my future home in the mountains. 

Downtown Ouray, "The Switzerland of the Rockies". 

From Ouray, we traveled through Montrose, Gunnison, Salida, Buena Vista (true Coloradoans know how to properly pronounce that!) before entering our home turf. I lost count of all the mountain passes we climbed, but each one was awe inspiring. I truly love this state! Love vacationing here as well. It was a great week. 

And we only saw one of these. Of course it was immediately after I told my brother and sister in law that there aren't any snakes in Colorado. Go figure.