We could live here, and here and here...

After we left Vegas we hit up three locations that we had heard we would love.

Our first stop was Flagstaff AZ. We got our first taste of cold the night we arrived. It hit the mid 20's for the first time. We had been averaging 40-50 degrees at night until we got to AZ. Brrr, we got the furnace going and were amazed at how cozy and warm our RV got. We spent the next day wandering the town, doing errands, and taking in the crisp fall weather.

We always seem to find that we really like staying in college towns. They tend to have the really interesting bars, and coffee shops. In the case of Flagstaff Josh and I found a great little combination of both...a coffee AND wine bar. We ordered two glasses of wine and proceeded to play a pretty amazing game of Backgammon. I totally thought I had it in the bag, Josh kept asking me the rules and I kept mercilessly sending his chips out, but he won by ONE chip. He was as surprised as I was. We headed out the next morning, to.....

Durango Co. We decided to spend only one night here because the next day we were headed to Pagosa Springs to see Mark Devoti, who toured with my parents when I was just a wee one. He was my body guard/baby tamer. But before we headed there, we hung out for most of the day in Durango, again, awesome little college town. We wandered in and out of galleries, and coffee shops. It (again) was a beautiful, clear, crisp day and we enjoyed being out in it.



Pagosa Springs was a mere hour away so we hit the road again. The drive was beautiful. When we got there we settled down on their front porch to catch up and take in the view which was breath taking. You can see our RV parked next to their horse barn in one of the shots.


Mark's wife Erica is an endurance rider and she has two race horses. We heard tales of 25-50 mile races completed in 12-24 hours. It was amazing to hear stories about just her and her horse, during a race, in the middle of the night when both of them had to keep awake and moving. Talk about a wonderful feeling.


We had a great lasagna dinner and opened the wine that Josh and I brought. Mark shared old pictures of the touring days complete with me as a bald, chunky, baby. Boy, does it look like they had some fun in those days. We chatted and caught up but before long we were all yawning. We headed up to bed with explicit instructions from Mark and Erica to go to the local hot springs the next day on our way out of town....

And boy are we glad we did. Pool after pool had been created from the natural hot sulfur springs that bubbled up from the ground. Your could choose which tub you wanted to soak in depending on the temp of the water to how much privacy you wanted. We soaked until we were pruney and relaxed. We got back on the road, this time headed to Fort Collins CO to see one of my partners in crime Ms. Katelyn Foster.

We had the Rockies looming on the horizon and the promise of a long slow haul over Wolf Creek pass. Luckily Mark had dropped off CD he had recorded of a few of his original songs, one of them being about the fabled pass. We ended up listening to the CD twice and burned 1/4 of a tank of gas by the time we finally boogied over the mountains.