Our Family vacation to Colorado and New Mexico was an awesome trip!

Everything went fairly well in terms of travel. We did have a problem with getting the rental car in Denver, and, anyone who’s been to Denver airport can appreciate this. We had to take a 15 minute shuttle ride to even get to the car rental “town.” Once we got there, it was mass chaos. I was about 8 deep in line, and it took over an hour.

Not anticipating that into our schedule, we just barely made it to the Alpine Inn in Frisco before they closed the front desk at 10:00pm. Beyond that, the trip went very smooth.

The next day was a beautiful, sunny, cool crisp day at 9000 feet. We stopped in at the Butterhorn Bakery & Cafe in downtown Frisco for breakfast. Girls ate well, and had fun at the same time.

That Sunday morning was a breast cancer walk, so the town was jam packed with walkers. The walk was down the walk/bike path that goes to Breckenridge from Frisco.

After breakfast, we drove the 10 minute drive to Breckenridge to check out the town. We were very surprised by all of the damage done by the beetles. There were more dead brown trees on the mountains than green ones. I saw in the local newspaper where Breckenridge had conceded defeat in the battle against the beetles.

In Breckenridge, there wasn’t a whole lot going on, as it was 9am on Sunday morning. But there was an art fair that was in the process of getting setup. We looked around at a few things, but the girls mostly wanted to play at the small playground in the middle of town.

It was a dangerous area though, an “iver” ran down through the town and the rapids were fast and “trong,” so I had to protect my girls.

After snapping a few family photos

We headed back north toward Frisco, but veered off to the east up a mountain to Sapphire Point, and easy family-rated trail that looks over Dillon Reservoir.

After our hike, we headed out on our 3 hour drive to Grand Junction. Coming down through the canyon just east of Glenwood Springs, we saw some rafters having a good time, so at the bottom of the canyon we stopped at the rest stop / camp ground to watch them go by.

Kenna took a few minutes to read up on the bears that inhabit the area.

On the way into Grand Junction we stopped at Canyon Wind Winery and did some tasting, brought a couple bottles, and then arrived at Grandma Lugy’s house around 3:00pm. It was hot in Grand Junction, about 93 degrees!

That concluded Part 1 of our trip. Part two is our visit with Lugy and drive into Ouray Colorado. Look for that post in the next couple days.