2.5.2012 – 2.5.2012  17 °C

After a nice sleep in and some brekky we went downstairs to reception and extended our stay in Ouray.. We decided to have a day off today and just do a bit of hiking and generally just recharge the batteries. This sleepy little town had really grabbed our hearts and we wanted to fully explore everything the town had to offer.

Straight after brekky we headed out for a walk thru the wilderness surrounding the town. Not far from our hotel (Box Canyon Lodge) is the Box Canyon waterfall so we made this our first stop. A sign on the route warned us of chipmunks and almost immediately after seeing the sign we saw our first little critter! Gee they can move fast when they want to! The waterfall is fairly unique in that it falls inside a very narrow canyon (more like a crack in the rock) so the only way to see the fall is to actually walk out on this steel walkway above the flowing river. Because the waterfall is inside the rocks the sound of the fall was almost deafening.. just awesome..

From the fall we continued our wander around the outskirts of the town. Next stop was at the Ice park. Ouray is an ice climbing mecca in the winter. Ice climbers from all over the world come here to climb the ice bound cliffs. The setup that Ouray has is pretty impressive. At first we couldn’t work out why they had all of these irrigation lines next to the cliff face.. we thought there is nothing to irrigate and you wouldn’t want to make snow here so…. It wasn’t until we found some locals that we understood what the setup was for. At the end of the Ice park M and I decided we’d had enough wandering and decided to head back to the village for a cuppa.

Our route back took us past more of the Ice park setup (they even have seats and platforms set out over the gorge so that spectators can watch the ice climbers in action!) before we made it back to town for a well deserved cuppa. D had hitched a ride back to town so he beat us to the coffee.

Just before lunch I did a bit of shopping (and purchased some jewellery) and after lunch we had a nice relaxing time reading/ snoozing/ emailing etc. Before the days end, we headed back into town for some more shopping and for a beer in one of the local haunts. No kidding, one of the people sitting next to us was an Aussie! There are so many aussie tourists over here at the moment (he was the second aussie I had met that day).. Go the Aussie dollar!! Last trip of the day was to the outskirts of town to see if we could see a native Long Horn Sheep. These sheep sure are elusive.. we’ve looked in nearly every town where they are supposed to reside and do you think we’ve seen one yet… We’ll have to keep hunting!

Today is our last day in the beautiful Rockies.. tomorrow we’re back into Utah and off to see Canyonlands and Arches NPs.

Song of the Day– Alvin and the Chipmunks, Funky Town