Continued from Pagosa Springs Part 1.

Quite the view for a picnic lunch. Ate inside due to the high chilly winds up here. We knew it would be a long day of off roading without a stop for lunch, so we got some sandwiches to eat up here to tie us over until we got off the mountain. It’s about 11:30am right now. We aired down the tires at around 9:30am this morning where the paved roads ended and it’s taken us 2 hours to get to the top of the mountain.

Almost 13,000 ft! I want to say we actually hit 13,000 feet earlier and had descended a little bit…maybe. Either way, can’t take a few steps out here without gasping for air.

So cool, and also in a way, a little proud that we made this leg of the trip happen. I was the one who mainly wanted to do this off road loop, and the rest of the family had to buy in as well.

Now slowly heading down.

I look at all those jagged rocks and am so thankful that I’ve got some tried and true ko2 tires instead of the oem tires. I am convinced we would have suffered a random rock puncture up here and it would be a total nightmare to try to jack it up and repair it. Don’t even want to think what would happen if we suffered two punctures and would be stuck up here. Would be a fucking nightmare for sure.

A waited a little, but the 4runner wouldn’t get out of my way so I could have a nice photo op with just my car. Oh well.

Oh yeah! No one else wanted to get out of the car and take a photo with me…they say it’s still too cold and windy.

Found a patch of unmelted snow up here. Kids did want to get out of the car and touch it. They of course immediately got all muddy from the melted snow mixed with the soil.

RL stressed out from being scared of the high altitude off roading on narrow rocky shelf roads. I made my peace offering by bringing her a piece of snow so that she too could touch some mountain top snow without leaving the car.

Looking good, looking real good. Now I feel less like a poser driving around the Defender. Actually using it doing what it’s made for. Oh yeah!

Alright, now down we go the other side of the mountain. This side of the mountain is much easier to drive on.

Easier to drive, but no less beautiful.

Ok, maybe a little rocky sections here and there, but still much milder than the other side.

Now that we are heading off the mountain, RL is feeling the relief that the end will be in sight soon.

From the drive’s seat, the edge of the road looks more like a straight drop off.

Easy peasy, no one is stressed out now.

We stopped for a restroom break at a campground type toilet here. There were flies, EVERYWHERE. I think some of it was just due to the toilet, but there were tons of flies at certain elevation up here in other spots as well.

No joke, the flies were so bad that after we all used the restroom, they all walked farther down the road before getting in the car to prevent flies from getting in when the car doors opened.

Honestly, even 50 feet down from the toilets, the flies were still bad. But we lucked out somehow, made a quick entrance into the car and no flies got in.

Old mining ruins all along this route.

As we are almost down the mountain, we came across our first Defender on the mountain. We stopped by to wave hi, and they walked forward and waved too, but they weren’t saying hi. They were asking for help.

They suffered a puncture on a tire, but they could not find their wheel lock key in their car. They asked to see if by some random chance we’ll have the same lock. Well, as expected, we didn’t have the same lock so they were stuck here. Fortunately for them, someone in their party hitched a ride with another car back into town to get another car and perhaps a tow truck to fix this. This part of the trail was seriously easy and if they got a puncture here, they would have definitely gotten a puncture higher up the trail.

Me getting puncture in the middle of no where on the way to Durango is turning out to be a blessing in disguise. I had the same tires as this Defender that got the puncture and I’m 90% sure I would have suffered the same fate on these trails on those shitty thin tires. So glad got some real off road tires and we were able to make it up and down the mountain without trouble. Totally worth it!

On another note, the couple in the Defender were also from Austin. We couldn’t really help them, offered them some water, tried to help them to find the wheel lock key, but no luck. We wished them luck and drove on. There was nothing we could do, but fortunate for them, they weren’t too far from town and the roads here were easy that they’ll be soon rescued by their friend.

Easy part of the trail where even a sedan can drove around without any trouble.

Cool, an old mine they’ve turned into a little shop.

The sign said ice cream, thought it’d be fun for the kids to have some treat after such a long day in the car already.

Probably a bad idea. The ice cream was already soft, and I can see this making a mess. It did.

Such a scenic route.

We’ve completed Engineer Pass and now back on paved roads at Lake City. It’s about 1:40pm, almost 6 hours later since we’ve left our cabin. It’s already been a long day of driving, but not that much distance covered since we were off-road majority of the time. Great sense of accomplishment that we were able to drive halfway across the country and go off-roading across a mountain.

Air the tires back to 50psi for the highways. The BFG KO2 did not disappoint. I had worried that I made the wrong tire choice and should have gotten something less off road and more on road. But after seeing that other Defender suffer a puncture on the easy part of the Engineer Pass, I felt 1000% better about my new tire choices. Well worth the extra noise to have a much more durable tire. I’ve got an inkling that if I had been on KO2 tires earlier, I wouldn’t have suffered that puncture in the middle of no where on my way to Durango.

Looking like a true off roader, nice. It was so dusty on the trail that all the dust attached to the edge of the doors where we touched it with our fingers.

Everyone is happy to be out of the car and moving around.

Time to get some real lunch.

Looks like a cool spot.

Outside is even better. The weather is quite nice, not too warm.

Need to just zone out after all that driving. Speaking of driving, good thing my injured back from yesterday seems to be healing slowly. I’m glad I didn’t wake up today with back muscle spasms.

PL has that 6th sense when a camera is about to take a photo.

We managed all day so far with no ipads, I think it’s time.

Reminds me of my old dog.

CL loves animals, she wanted to pet them.

After a quick lunch, it’s time to hit the road again. We’ve still got some more driving to do before we reach our hotel for the night.

It’s all uphill in high elevation, that’s got to be a brutal bike ride.

Look, a red mountain. There are parts of the forest here that seemed to have either suffered a disease or a drought or fire? We couldn’t quite figure out. It seems like a fire, but I thought the smaller tree branches would have been burned as well as the leaves.

Colorado is beautiful state.

Long day for everyone.

Been a long time since I’ve driven through a tunnel.

Oh look another one.

A very long downhill with several runaway truck ramps.

After a very long day, finally reached our hotel for the night in Pagosa Springs. It’s now 5pm in the afternoon, we are tired.

This is what $186 a night gets you about 5min outside Pagosa Springs.

We wanted to visit the hot springs, but it’s dinner time for the kids. Worry not, we planned ahead. We had gotten the rest of the pizza to go during our late lunch today. So as we got the kids changed into their bathing suites, we also had them eat the rest of the pizza.

Drove into town and straight into the hot springs bathhouse. It was quite pricy, even for a day pass. For the 5 of us it was over $200. Eek, this better be worth it. Also, they are bit deceptive about the time that the $200 gets you. They say its for 24 hours but when we asked if that meant we could come back tomorrow they said “no. that is only for one day”. The hot springs aren’t even open for a 12 hour day let alone 24 hours…why claim 24 hours when you can’t actually get 24 hours even if you go first thing in the morning. Lies.

Over twenty pools, all different temperatures.

Quite nice after a long travel day.

The kids pool.

One of the spring sources.

The pond with the foot bridge has gold fish in it!

Our time limit at each pool was maybe 5 to 10min before the kids wanted to move and try something else. We kept on starting conversations with other adults here in the hot springs only to have to move on quickly.

Having a mother daughter moment.

I can see this place being amazing without kids. Also being even more amazing to come during the winter when the weather is really cold.

PL can take some heat. An employee came by periodically and measured the actual temp for the different pool. The sign said 106, but the true temp was actually 109.

The plunge pool in the river. I think the temperature was in the 70s today, but during the winter time, it’s just icy cold from the snow.

So cute. Debating whether to take the plunge into the cold water or not.

So cool to have so many different types of pools here.

I’m just walking around in a fish pond.

That was fun. We had bought 2 beach towels halfway through the trip just in case. Well, made good use of them today since towel rentals here were a steep $10 per towel. No thank you, we’ll share two towels for all 5 of us.

Oh look, found another snake.

We got back to the hotel, changed and showered the kids, put them to bed.

Then I drove back into Pagosa Springs by myself to pick up some food. It was funny, because as I was leaving the restaurant with my food, I hear someone call out my name. Wait what? Someone from Pagosa Springs knows me? It turned out to be another family that we had met in the hot springs, and they were having dinner on the balcony and saw me leave. Ha.

These taco were surprisingly good, like really good.

Goodnight Defender, you did awesome today. I love you.

To be continued at Albuquerque Day 1.