Montrose, CO ~ Day 4 Silverton, Mine Tour & Ophir Pass!

July 6, 2013 ~ Since this was our last full day with Paul, Whitnee and the kids we decided to hit the road and head to Silverton, CO! I know I keep saying this but it is seriously some of the most beautiful scenery out there! The mountains are awesome the view is amazing and it's really cool how you can go from 92 degrees and get to 58 degrees in the mountains!

It wasn't a bad drive anywhere we have gone either.

Welcome to Silverton, CO! 

 We decided to take a mining tour! 

Everyone got to try to pan for gold while we waited for our tour. The water was freezing and the kids found a few pieces of copper and silver. (I think they put things in there for kids to find)

Then it was picture time! Imagine that! 

Even Brandon and I got another picture! 

(It's a good thing I brought my tripod this trip or you might not see me in pictures!)

Then it was time to go on the tour! 

What a fun bunch of people! Memories were made right here! 

(Don't be surprised if one of these pictures is your Christmas card this year!) 

We went 1500' back in the mine and our tour guide was awesome! 

(If you know Bob Wagner, Shelly DeVore's dad, he reminded me of him... funny and could tell stories!) He was a miner in this mine many moons ago.

If you ever go to Silverton, CO make sure you stop by this mine tour!

Momma and her babies! 

This cute little guy came to see if we had a good time! 

Y'all come back to see us!

Old Hundred Gold Mine Tour

721 County Road 4A

Silverton, CO 81433

970-387-5444

http://minetour.com/

This little town was really cool!

How could I not get a picture of this guy... 

He was totally saying "Hey blonde, take my picture!"

This ride caught our attention...

It's for a place called "Grumpy's"! 

We ate at a place called Handlebars which was pretty cool!

The bar was covered with pictures of guys with mustaches

We went to an awesome little dessert shop that had funnel cakes and you could put any topping you wanted on it. We ordered one with cream cheese and raspberry filling... OMG! YUM! 

Inside the shop they had a map of where people traveled from.

Seriously Columbia, MO.... no one? 

Have no fear y'all... I got it!

I had to go the World's Highest Harley Davidson store to get my daddy some shirts!

Who knew.... a My Favorite Things in Silverton, CO! 

(Just like Ashley Simpson's store in New Franklin, MO!)

 Then I took a few pictures of some random stuff...

these Columbine flowers are everywhere in Colorado
(at least all the places we traveled to)

They had a really neat train store that had all kinds of cool train pictures/pins/signs.
I thought this little guy was cute!

When we left Silverton, CO we decided to take a mountain pass. It was really cool and the scenery was yet again, amazing!

When we got to the top the boys wanted to play in the snow.

They thought it would be fun to throw snowballs at me!

OPHIR PASS
11,789 FT
It was super windy up there and about 58 degrees!

Super cool to be here!

As we headed down the pass it was pretty much a one car road and if you got off the road you went straight down. (Whitnee and Damon didn't really care for this but was total troopers on this trip)

There was so many trees that had things carved in them throughout the road heading down.

I think Damon was happy to be back on the normal roads!

These tepees are on Ralph Lauren's Ranch....As many of you know when we came out 3 years ago to Paul and Whitnee's wedding we had to drive a public access road that went through his 17,000 acre ranch to get to the meadow where they got married. It's truly impressive and I would love to see his place as Oprah did. (Of course that won't happen but it would be cool)

Here's a link to the video that Oprah has of her tour on his ranch and the tepees.
http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Oprah-Explores-Double-RL-Ranch-Video

As we headed back to Montrose, CO to call it an early evening we drove down another country road.

As you can see these homes out here are beautiful!

These boys were great while I took several pictures of them and then when they were done they hopped the fence and walked away.

We had dinner at a the Red Barn. There rolls are amazing! Prime rib was good too!

After dinner everyone was ready to relax and we called it an early evening. Brandon and I decided that since this was our last night there we wanted to take a ride and see what we could find.

We headed back to Ridgeway, CO to see if we could see some more critters. We head up an access road that lead up to an area people camped out. This was the same place we saw the bear last year so we thought we might get lucky and see him again. 

We had a lot of fun and Brandon was such a good sport at taking the hundreds of pictures throughout the trip. I highly recommend if you go on vacation take a tripod for your camera. It's a great way to capture great pictures with you in them! 

We got to ride through some great country and made it to the Uncompahgre National Forest and saw one little mule deer on our adventure. We road all the way to the very back of this road and there was several campers and hikers. We really were hoping that we would have seen some more wildlife (and if you talk to Brandon he wanted to see a Mountain Lion and a Bear). It was 10:00 PM when we finally called it an evening. (It was getting too dark to take pictures)