Durango, CO

We are currently spending a quiet hour or so in the house of a dear family friend, Kathleen, in Durango, CO. Kathleen was a youth group advisor for the Unitarian Universalist high school group I was a part of when I was growing up and later on we served as advisors for the group together for a year. We detoured down to Durango on our journey specifically to visit her since she moved away from Wisco two years ago. I count her as a friend and mentor. She is a role model for the kind, calm and developmental type of person I hope to be as I continue to evolve. So, I'm overjoyed to be here visiting her.

I also used to house-sit and dog-sit for her family back home. So, it's a calm and familiar feeling to be in her house, even though it's a different house altogether. It's been nice to reacquaint with Boone, her Brittany Spaniel too. Boone was a crazy bundle of energy that would pull me along behind him on his leash and nip at my hands when I tried to pull back the covers to get into bed at night. He seems to have mellowed with age and I've very much enjoyed being in the presence of a lovely doggie.

We've spent some hours sitting and catching up over dinner and breakfast. This morning we learned about the huge flood in Milwaukee and called a couple of folks to make sure our house is doing okay. Thanks to Kev and Alicia who are holding down the Knudson fort, we are reassured that all is well. After our late breakfast we took a jaunt to the dog park up on a hill that overlooks the Animas River in the middle of Durango. We hiked a little and watched Boone go nuts for sniffing, marking his territory and jumping in and out of the river. I was amazed at his cliff scaling skills!

Kathleen dropped us off downtown where we visited a couple of local brew pubs, Carver and Steamworks Brewing Company, to eat and try several beer samplers. Now we're just chilling out waiting for Kathleen to get home. Tonight we intend to go to a master's class for young musicians up at Fort Lewis College that's just up the hill from her house and visit a little saloon with local honky tonk music and two-steppin'.

Almost forgot about this...on the road from Gunnison we visited The Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park and a couple of little awesome high mountain towns: Ouray and Silverton. Never would have thought there was so much beauty and stuff to do down in this part of the state. The San Juan mountain range is gorgeous and the mix of desert topography we saw on our way through was truly spectacular.

Tomorrow we are on the road to either Arizona or Utah, not sure which yet. But we will most definitely be visiting Mesa Verde National Park and taking a detour to drive through Monument Valley.