COLORADO - We made it!

The trip from Columbia to Slick Rock, CO was definitely interesting. We rolled out of town at about 6:00 on Friday night. The trip to Burlington, CO was pretty painless. The only upside to leaving in the evening and driving all night was not having to see Kansas for six hours. We arrived in Burlington, CO just before 4:00AM CST. The town was totally empty when we pulled in. It's a small town, the main drag is only a few blocks long. The streets are unmarked (made it difficult to find the church) and tumbleweed was blowing across the street. We all agreed it felt like a really bad Western film.

We all crashed on the nursery floor of the First Christian Church as soon as we were able. Despite our exhaustion and constant snooze button-hitting, tornado sirens woke us up at 7:00AM on Saturday morning. I'm not sure what type of person decides to test sirens at 7 on a Saturday morning, but I'm glad that's all it was. We ARE driving rentals, after all.

We turned the 10 hour drive from Burlington to Slick Rock into 12 hours with the loss of signal in the mountains (which negated any help from GPS). We didn't mind as we were enjoying the beautiful drive through the Rocky Mountains. Purple mountains majesty indeed! The roads were terrifyingly curvy, there was a foot of snow barely pushed to the side of the road, and the scenery was distractingly beautiful.

We arrived at Winterhawk Lodge just after a short grocery run around 8:00PM. We were warmly greeted by Ron and Kathe Heaton, the lodge's owners who made sure we had plenty of blankets, towels, and a stoked wood furnace.

We spent our free day today traveling to Mesa Verde National Park. Although many of the larger cliff dwellings are still closed for the season, we were able to climb to our hearts content at the Spruce Tree Dwellings. They were incredible! We enjoyed scenic lookouts of some of the closed dwellings at an elevation of 7,000 ft with breathtaking views of sweeping canyons.

Tomorrow we will begin our first day of work with the wild horses and removing the tamarisk plants, weather permitting. As previously stated, there was about a foot of snowfall last week so Disappointment Valley is very muddy and we might not be able to work efficiently.

Stay tuned for more updates!