The Bennetts: Jeeping Capital of the World

Ouray is called "Jeeping Capital of the World". There are many, many more jeeping trails here than there are regular roads. So to capitalize on this, we rented a jeep today. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, yes and no. At the rental company we asked the guy who owns the shop which trails we should do. He recommended two that form a loop around town...Ophir Pass and Imogene Pass. We started with Ophir on a beautiful, too good to be true, morning...

The road was pretty easy. Gorgeous fall colors and a smooth ride.

My trusty driver...

You'll find that, at this point, I am physical incapable of not taking pictures of these Aspen Trees. It's an illness, I'm looking into a pill...

The road to nowhere...or everywhere, depending on how you look at it.

Ahhhh!!! So worth it...

These mountains are red from the iron in them...

This is a view down on the road. If it looks like a tiny ledge, it was. But we really didn't think too much about it...

I want to live in the Aspens...would anyone come visit me?

Ooooh, picture perfect!

This must be what it is like to live in a jeep commercial!

We crossed some streams, and felt very proud of ourselves...

At the lower elevations, the aspens are just now turning.

This sign is outside of the town of Ophir. Apparently, they get a bunch of avalanches every year. You could pay me to live here, but it would have to be alot.

In Ophir, you make fences out of whatever is most handy...(these are snow ski's)

We visited the ghost town of Alta. These ghosts towns are everywhere, remnants left from the mining days. They are not safe to explore on foot, so we stayed in the jeep.

What? A picture without yellow aspens, you ask? Yes, occasionally the trees are different colors. I like the red of these trees against the red of these mountains. Very pretty.

Can you see the confetti?

Ok, this was the beginning of Imogene Pass. I don't know who Imogene was, but she must have been one tough cookie. You know those ideas that seem great at the time, but turn out different than you thought? Yeah, that was us today. The first pass we did above, Ophir, was easy....even tame. In the pic above we're beginning to get uneasy on Imogene Pass. The drop offs on the right side of the road are hard core...I'm talking you would be conscious for a LONG time before you finally hit the bottom of this gulch. Yikes!

And we continue to get concerned... At several points during the journey we questioned our sense of gravity. I think I threatened to get out and walk about three times. Matt and I just kept laughing. There was really nothing else to do. We couldn't turn back. Tonight when we made it to the hotel in Durango, I realized I had burns all over my legs and across my torso. Yeah, from the seat and seatbelt. Good times.

Going through the tunnel on this road was one of the few times you felt like you were safe! Ha!

At the top of this road is the ghost town of Tomboy, which must have been a pretty successful mine because it was a large town.

It's starting to get cold and the clouds are rolling in. This is probably a good spot to tell you that at the hot springs last night we met a couple who came over this pass the day before. They told us that at the top of the pass, a storm rolled in and they got caught in a snow/hail storm. Double yikes!

This is the view from the top. We snapped and picture and jumped back into the jeep. Do you see the clouds? They were definately rolling in and we didn't want to find out what would happen!

Snow at the top of the pass.

You can't tell from this picture, but it had started to snow. We found out later that it snows on this mountain just about every day. Only in the summer, it doesn't stick.