Snow on the mountains

During the night, strong winds came rushing down from the mountains rocking the cougar and waking us up.   Rain followed and the temperature dropped, so the next morning it was quite chilly when we got up, having to walk to the campground showers, needless to say we noticed a lot more than usual.

 

As we set off, it was still quite chilly, but sunny with beautiful clear blue skies.   We followed highway 165 through Rye as it climbed high into the mountains crossing the Bigelow Divide at over 9,000 ft.   There were so many beautiful views we got quite blasé about them in the end.

 

Surrounded by aspen covered mountains, Lake Isabel looked stunning, we stopped for a while to take photographs and enjoy the view.

Further along, we drove past Bishop Castle, the owner built it entirely by hand, it is open to the public for a donation, we always meant to stop and have a look around, but as we always seemed to be driving past late in the day, never actually did.

At the junction with highway 96, we turned left.   As we drove further along, we saw glimpses of snow covered mountains and realised that the rain we’d had overnight in Colorado City, had fallen as snow in the mountains.

Driving down into the small town of Westcliffe, snow covered Sangre De Cristo Mountains made a spectacular backdrop against the clear blue sky.

It’s a lovely town, with wide streets and flower filled tubs, not far out of town is an RV park that, from the road, looked nice, we’ll have to check that out.

As we’ve already discovered in numerous places, at this time of the year (October, I'm still catching up) quite a few places have closed for the season, but we found a great bakery and a lovely restaurant overlooking the mountains for lunch.

We’d definitely like to come back and explore more in this area. 

Have fun, we are!