Wednesday September 16, 2009-Priest Gulch RV Resort

Today's entry will document events from yesterday (Tuesday) as well as today (Wednesday). Tuesday we went on another ride with Susan to Dunton, which is an old ghost town that has been restored and is now a high dollar resort/retreat.
This photo shows Hwy. 145 at the turn off to the Dunton road on the north side of the park.

This photo is of a meadow with a large herd of goats that are grazing in this area. This land is owned and controlled by the San Juan National forest and must be leased out to the animal owners.

This is a close-up of the goat herd. I was not able to pick out a dog that runs with and protects the herd, but we believe we saw it.

This shot is of a river or stream running under the Dunton road. It looks like it would be a great place to fish and likely has not been fished at all in some time. We did not see anyone fishing in the area but we did see a lot of hunters camping in the area. We suggested this stream to the others that were fishing.

This is the town/resort of Dunton. There is a keypad controlled gate into the property. We did not see anyone around the town but there were several fireplaces that were smoking, so someone must have been there.

Dunton road circles around over the mountains and comes out south of our RV park on Hwy. 145.

We also rode down Taylor Drive, which is south of this location. This road is much more wooded and there are many hunters that are camped along the road. I did not take any photographs of this area, but we did see one deer running in the woods. We also saw many small trees that were bent over toward the road. It was really strange the way they were bent over with no apparent cause. We first believed that it had been caused by a tornado, but then we noticed that they were bent in toward the road, which didn't make any sense. I guess if we had been in New Mexico in Area 51 I could have understood but here in Colorado, we didn't know what caused it.

We returned to the park, planning to have supper with our other friends but they had not returned. They had been supposed to have returned by noon, but we didn't leave until after that time and since we didn't know what they had done, we decided to go into Cortez to eat pizza at the Main Street Brewery which was very good. We returned to the park and went to Ricky and Dee's trailer while they ate their supper. A rain shower (daily) made us go inside. Harry and Judy had fixed a delicious cherry cobbler from cherries they had bought in Washington state. We all retired to our trailers about 9:30 or so.

On Wednesday, we all wanted to stay home. Susan and Dee decided to go on a backcountry ride in the Jeep, but returned about 3 o'clock. They had a very nice time. We had planned on a fish fry tonight but heavy rains that started in the afternoon made us change our plans. We decided to go into Cortez to the brewery again. While on our way to Cortez, we saw what first looked like snow on the ground but we later decided it was sleet that had fallen earlier in the afternoon. It had gotten cooler, about 50 degrees and it felt as if it were going to get much colder tonight but we will see. Everyone enjoyed their meal and we had a nice ride home. We had seen some cattle loose on the highway on the way over but they were gone when we came back home. It was still raining, so we didn't have a fire tonight and just went home.

So long.