Continued from Durango Day 1.

The girls begged and begged for these llama stuffed animals when we were in Santa Fe. We didn’t get them then when they really wanted them. Then me and RL talked it over and decided maybe we should get it for them after all, so when RL went on her own shopping stroll, she got them for the girls. Little KL also got a little extra toy as well.

Leaving the dirt road neighborhood that our cabin is located in.

Made it out of the door in good time. Then again, our kids wake up super early at like 6:30am. And look, all 4 tires have good pressure.

Up 550, the million dollar highway.

I believe that’s Engineer Mountain ahead. We’ll be going through the Engineer Pass tomorrow.

Soon, we turned off of 550 and went onto a dirt road, Old Lime Creek Road. It’ll lead to a trail head so we can do a little light hike.

It’s getting a little bit more rocky. I am more appreciative of the K02 tires that I got. Would not want a puncture out here.

I think this calls for raising the air suspension height.

The kids enjoying some light offroading.

KL enjoying so light offroading.

I made RL get out to take pictures of the Defender at this point. Then, I drove off without her and made her walk to the stopping point. It wasn’t that far ahead.

Made it. Pretty easy offroading.

Even a Subaru Crosstrac made it up here pulling a trailer. They are also from Texas. Speaking of Texas, there are a lot of Texas plated cars up here. Everyone trying to get away from the heat.

Also, it’s absolutely beautiful up here. However, beauty does not cure back pain. When we got here, I got my hat out of the trunk, and without doing anything, I managed to tweak my back. All that driving and sitting has made my back really tight. Hopefully it’ll just be moderate and I won’t wake up tomorrow unable to move.

This one takes a bit more wrangling.

Nice day for a hike, not too warm yet.

The kids were concerned about the fact that bears live in these mountains. PL kept on asking me if the hike was dangerous. I told her I didn’t know, maybe a little bit, but not much. Something like that. They soon forgot about the bears.

Amazing that we can actually be out here doing outside stuff. It’s like 105 in Austin.

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Punks carving on trees.

Little KL kept on complaining about how tired he was and how he wanted to be carried etc. etc. Youngest kid just wants to be babied.

PL is already ready for the spot light. She has a 6th sense for when there’s a photo about to be taken.

We convinced LKL (little KL) to climb a little bit more, and we got to this mid height clearing. Let’s explore this area.

Wish we had a tripod.

Really beautiful up here.

A closer look at Engineer Mountain. Cool that a big portion of it is above the tree line.

Cool, quartz.

See, never wants to miss a photo pose.

Barely made it anyway up this trail, but we are at elevation and LKL has been complaining about how tired he has been. Speaking of altitude, none of us are having altitude sickness. Good thing we made it a gradual trip up here to Colorado and had stopped at Santa Fe beforehand.

Down we go. We did not see any bears.

Looking good in off-road height.

As I was just getting a little proud of a little off-roading on these new tires, I come across two minivans coming up the trail. I really think they won’t be able to make it up the whole trail without scraping though. Good luck to them.

After the light off-roading and light hiking, we dropped by a honey shop that we saw earlier on the highway.

Oh cool, they also distill honey.

This was fun to drink, got a couple bottles.

On our drive to the honey place, we also did manage to get the first cracked windshield from a rock in this car. Ouch. I’ll need to buy a windshield repair kit soon to fix it before it spreads more.

After the hike, it’s lunch time, but first, hot tub time. The kids were really excited to get back in the hot tub after their little hike.

They loved all the bubbles.

Ahhh, so nice and peaceful. Some good ol hot tub to help my back muscle that I pulled earlier in the day.

As long as I don’t look to my left.

I watch the kids in the hot tub while RL gets lunch ready. Some new dishes, some leftovers from last night.

How awesome is it that it’s early August and we are eating lunch outside in the middle of day. In fact, it’s a little chilly in the shade that we had to keep our towels on.

Simple meal, but so delicious with family.

After lunch time, it’s a short nap time. We’ve got more events planned for the mid afternoon.

The crappy thing about vacation rental is having to clean up after yourself and load the dishwasher and take out the trash, then you pay a cleaning fee on top of that. Plus, these instructions are pretty vague.

After a not long enough nap, it’s time to head back into Durago.

First stop, AutoZone to pick up a windshield repair kit. Gotta fix that starburst on my windshield before it gets worse.

Looking good parking in downtown Durango.

Oh, look who we’ve got here. Our good friends from our street back in Austin! Our two families had independently made summer road trip plans to Colorado and when we found out about it, matched up our schedule to see if we happened to overlap anywhere. Sure enough, we overlapped in Durango for one day, so we met up and got the kids together for a little surprise. The kids were only a little surprised….

Durango doesn’t seem to have any restaurants with a playscape other than McDonald’s so here we are at a brewery. It’s more like a restaurant than a brewery.

Let’s see how long we can keep these kids entertained and contained before we need to break out the ipads.

Yum, steak. Well, the kids lasted almost two hours before we decided to move to a playground.

While the kids played at the playscape, all the adults watched me fix my windshield crack.

Pretty awesome playscape here. It’s still nice and not too hot too.

Genuinely feels nice and comfortable to sit over here in the shade. Both families are halfway through our road trip and all the parents are tired. It’s nice to have some adult conversations.

They usually just play together in the street, and now they are playing in a playscape hundreds of miles away from home. I think to the kids, everything feels exactly the same other than a different playscape.

Looking good, windshield fixed, tires all holding air.

Oh look a snake.

All the kids heard about the snake and all came running over to look at it. Haha.

Play time over, see yall back in Austin.

Back up the mountain range and back to our cabin.

Did some laundry at the cabin. Love how all the copper pipes are lined up parallel to each other.

Also managed to find the dumpster for our trash. It’s got a bear lock on it that I had to remove first.

Put the kids to bed, let’s hope they fall asleep relatively fast.

Tomorrow, we’ll tackle a mountain pass with the Defender. It’s been an awesome road trip vehicle so far. Comfortable, spacious, quiet (though, a little louder now with the new tires), high seating position.

Quiet time after a long fun day. Time to wind down.

But yeah, this is also happening while I wind down. Yum.

To be continued at Pagosa Springs Part 1.