Driving through the Rockies

Greetings from Fort Collins, Colorado. Was going to attempt to get to Cheyenne, Wyoming, but the hotel prices up there were double what they were in Fort Collins, which is only a 30 minute difference.

• Starting my morning by going to cafe down the street which offered a complementary breakfast for the hotel stayed at. (Got some tasty biscuits with sausage gravy and has browns)
• Walked Main Street Ouray (Really liked the town being surrounded by tall mountain cliffs)

Mountains everywhere

• Went to Box Canyon Falls in Town (A tall waterfall that runs behind a cliff)

Also went to a bridge at the top

• Drove up into the Rockies on US 550, US 50, and US 285 (Some really cool vantage points of the mountains, with one side of the Rockies being more lush than the other. Also, they are in the fall colors right now over here)

This is over two miles above sea level

• Got lunch at Taco Bell (The chalupa agreed with my stomach better than the Navajo taco from yesterday)
• Stopped at the Continental Divide (Also had a few snow flurries there)

Continental Divide

• Almost went to St Elmo ghost town, but decided not to because it was 45 minutes off the main road and would have put finishing my drive through the Rockies after sunset (Definitely will plan to go there if I am ever in the area again)
• Tried to stop in South Park (the real one being a remodeled 1880's town), but they closed for the year last week.

Clearly not a crudely animated, vulgar town

• Bypassed Denver (Everything that looked interesting to do there closed at 5, which is when I was going to get there)
• Drove up to Fort Collins. Stopped at Charco Broiler Steakhouse at the edge of town. Got onion soup and ground sirloin smothered in green chili sauce. Didn't feel like going into the town itself and dealing with the crowds, being that Fort Collins is the home to Colorado State University. (Yes, I know I technically live in a college town in Arbutus, but UMBC and Colorado State are two very different kinds of colleges)

Yummy soup. Probably not good for me with all that cheese

This is definitely not good for me, but oh so tasty

• Staying at a La Quinta tonight. Room is nice, but around 10pm tonight, it started to like smell burning rubber by the window. (Maintenance person who stopped by said that it was some roof work that was being done, but I wouldn't discount that the noisy neighbors are possibly smoking something, given that it is Colorado and that it was all of a sudden.)

Tomorrow I should be able to get up to Mt. Rushmore around lunch time. After that, I'm going to start slowly making my way back east.