Durango and the Million Dollar Highway -- in the Snow

This morning, I'm in Gunnison, Colorado. I arrived on Tuesday in Durango. Oddly enough, I spent the entire afternoon practically at a Starbucks, because it was the first coffee shop I saw, and I needed a place to hang out for a couple of hours while I waited for Mary Cardin, whom I was supposed to meet and stay with that night.

While I waited there, I met up with Michael Rendon, a friend of my friend Marjorie's, and the mayor of Durango! He's really interesting, and we had a nice long chat before he had to leave to go to a meeting. As soon as he left, Mary showed up and took me for an early dinner with a friend of hers at a local place, Old Tymer's. After dinner, we went back to Mary's place, which is an amazing adobe up in the hills of Durango. She has an incredible roof which we climbed up to, and I was able to see all of the mountains around her home. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera with me onto the roof...

I also got to meet Mary's roommates, Denise and Sheena, who are wonderful and lots of fun. And I took a tour of the house. Mary's husband (who died three years ago) was an amazing artist, and her home is filled with his art, which is all of American Natives. I've included my favorite of his paintings here, but I took pictures of many of them.

Wednesday morning, I met Michael for breakfast at the Durango Diner....was given an enormous plate of food! And again, I had some outstanding conversation with Michael. In addition to being the mayor of Durango, he's also the ringmaster in a local circus! Also, he's traveled the world on $8000, and without taking an airplane. He's a fascinating guy....I'm so glad Marjorie introduced me to him.

I went back to Mary's to do laundry for the first time since I left Dallas (yippee!), and then took a little nap and did some yoga. Then I wandered through downtown Durango, which is really cute....just basically a long street of shops surrounded by mountains. At 5pm, I met Mary, her roommates, and several of her girlfriends for a beer and dinner. Again, Mary and her friends are all really wonderful people, and the conversation went on awhile, even after we arrived back at Mary's house, until about 10pm.

Mary, by the way, is really terrific. She's been through a lot, but she loves every single day, and truly believes that her life is wonderful. It was remarkable to spend a few days with her, and I can see that I have lots to learn from her. We talked quite a bit about my trip, and about my journey (which of course is completely separate from the travel), and she gave me many books to read and many blessings for both the trip and the journey. She was amazing. There's no way for me to summarize my experience there. I owe her many thanks, for her home, for her hospitality, and for sharing her life lessons and her spirit with me.

Yesterday, I had a Skype meeting with Patty, and then I left Durango and headed for Ouray (prounced YOO-ray). It was an interesting drive - about 15 miles north of Durango, it started snowing in the mountains! So here I was, driving one of my first times on some serious mountain roads, and it was snowing reasonably hard (on May 13, mind you). But Janie and her 4-wheel drive did just great. I took some amazing pictures in the snow (didn't include those here, sorry), we arrived in Silverton safely, and then we took the Million Dollar Highway from Silverton to Ouray. The weather was better on the MDH, but the drive was freaky -- on one side of the narrow road is mountain that goes up, up, up -- and on the other side is mountain that goes down, down, down. So in order to avoid careening off the road to my death, I "hugged the mountain" as Denise and Sheena advised me, and drove the speed limit the entire way -- which annoyed some people behind me. Oh well -- they've probably done this drive more often than I have. But it gave me lots of excuses to get off to the side of the road and take pictures, right?

I spent the day in Ouray, the "Switzerland of America". It's a really cute town, elevation 7700 feet. Has basically one main street, with little shops and restaurants. I met a glass-blower in his shop, and he let me come back and watch him work for a while. He's originally from Mississippi, but moved out to Ouray, and now he works every day until 3pm, and the goes climbing every afternoon. I left Ouray around 4pm, and then drove to Gunnison, where I am now.

I actually stayed at the cutest little motel last night, the Alpine Inn. A Polish couple owns it, and they obviously really love what they do. They replaced the countertops in the bathroom with granite, and put a little care package on my bed with toothpastes, vitamins, hot chocolate, all kinds of little things. Really cute. And they do all the work at the motel, too. It's been really nice, so I didn't leave as early this morning as I thought I might....instead, I'm writing this from my little room here, since it's nice and cozy here.

So today, it's on to Colorado Springs, to see my friends Dax and Amethyst from medical school. Another report later!