Hooray for Ouray!

After leaving our campground in HOTchkiss at 5,200 feet in elevation, our drive took us all the way down to under 5000 feet before we started a steady climb back into the mountains. It's been months since we've seen an elevation that low! As we drove the motor home into downtown Ouray, we are glad to see the Garmin displaying that we are back up at 7,792 feet in elevation again. Let the cool weather resume!

We have always struggled with how to pronounce the name of our new home town. It is pronounced "yer-ray" with the emphasis on the last syllable so that it rhymes with Hooray. Now that's easy to remember! Hooray for Ouray! On the far right side of the picture above, you can see the sign to turn for the 4J+1+1 RV Park. Our campground is just two blocks from Main Street, so it was fun to be able to walk to the historic downtown area from our camp site.

Many of the buildings in Ouray were built in the 1880's, and it is a very quaint downtown that is ringed by mountains.

On every street corner we found hanging flower baskets and planters with more flowers. It is a beautiful little mountain town!

We also had a nice view of the mountains from our campground. We love our spot here in town at 4J+1+1 RV Park, and we just had to ask where that name came from. We found that the names of the mother, father, and two children of the Clark family all started with the letter "J" when they started this campground 60 years ago. When a third J child was born they added +1, and another +1 when the fourth J child arrived.

This campground is taking up prime real estate in a popular mountain town where property values have sky-rocketed. So we guess we can't blame them for packing in the RV sites as tightly as possible. We took this overhead picture from the mountain to show how close we are to all our neighbors.

We had only planned to stay three nights, but when a spot opened up for an additional two nights, we moved into that site to stretch our stay to five. We must say that the 50-amp full-hook-up site was the most expensive of the summer--maybe the most expensive ever. It was also one of the narrowest ever.

The premium camp sites are along the river that runs through town. We were a little startled by the olive green water of the river in Ouray, but we were told that was the normal color for the Uncompahgre River.

One of the main tourist attractions in the town of Ouray is the hot spring pools. Nestled at the base of one of the mountains, it's just a couple blocks from our camp site. This summer they have the children's slides roped off, and some of the pools closed because of Covid.

They are also limiting it to only 50 people allowed in for two-hour sessions. Then they clean for an hour before they start another two-hour session. We walked to the park and found this large group of people standing in line in hopes to get a ticket for the next session, even though it didn't start for another hour. We counted well over 50 people, so not everyone was going to get in the hot springs even though they showed up an hour early.

Right beside the hot springs is this fish pond, filled with hungry fish that come to the surface as soon as anyone stops at the edge. A sign board explained that in the early 1900's, the Weston family moved from town and left their pet goldfish in a pit leftover from the time that Ouray had a brick factory. Later, a different brick factory pit became a swimming pool that was filled with the hot water that bubbled up nearby. That started the hot springs tradition with an adjacent fish pond that is still going on in Ouray more than a hundred years later.

While we are living in town, that doesn't mean that we don't see wildlife. One night a bear visited our campground. He tore open a tent with food left inside, and left muddy prints and scat in several sites. All this happened during the night, so we didn't get pictures. But we did get a picture of this deer on the edge of town.

She let us get surprisingly close, so it looks like she is a city deer and used to people.

While getting to Ouray from the north was a simple drive, we found that continuing south will put us on the "million dollar highway." We drove the car on this road, made famous for its 15-mph S-curves, and . . .

and hair-pin turns--all with gorgeous mountain views.

The Red Mountain area just south of Ouray has colorful mountains that are evidence of the minerals that they provide. For more than a century, miners have been digging the precious metals and minerals from these beautiful mountains.

We found a road-side viewpoint that described the process of cleaning up the mining pollution that damaged the water sources in these mountains. The minerals are so thick in the soil and rocks that it has turned this river running beside the million dollar highway to yellow.

We saw lots of blind curves, and we didn't see many guard rails to protect vehicles from the long drop-offs on this highway. 

It's the kind of highway that looks like this on your GPS screen while you are driving:

To further complicate the drive, there is road construction happening this summer on that section of the highway just south of Ouray.

We've decided that we won't be taking the motor home south on this section of the million dollar highway this summer. But we did drive the car as far as the little town of Silverton, with its wide dirt street and cowboy ambiance.

Here the only form of public transportation is a stage coach that makes a loop through town. At 9,300 feet in elevation, Silverton is higher and cooler than Ouray, but requires driving your RV some interesting highway miles to get here.

For us, we prefer our stay in our new little home town of Ouray. As the sun was setting on the mountain tops above our motor home, we feel lucky to have a spot in this pretty little mountain town. Hooray for Ouray!