MudderNutter
Adventurer
Hey fella's!
I'm a little delayed in posting a trip report, but had quite a bit of work to catch up on when I got home. The goal for this trip was to head out to Colorado with my lovely girlfriend Leigh. She has never been anywhere out west before, so my excitement to show her it's grandness was pretty...grand. I spent most of the spring getting my XJ ready for the trip, and have a build thread on this site if anyone is interested.
The Trip:
We departed on the evening of Thursday June 18th from Wilmington, NC. Our route had us travel a bit north to Richmond, VA so that we could drop this pretty lady off with my parents for the duration of our trip.
Once we were finished up with the dog exchange we set our sights west, and drove through the night. We ended up on the Kansas Colorado boarder around dusk, and decided to catch some shut eye at a campground. Here is the first photo from the trip. It's a shot of me driving into that beautiful red Kansas sun:
The XJ did great on the drive. Anyone who owns an older jeep knows that they aren't perfect highway vehicles, but I was able to maintain 65-75mph the whole trip while getting about 17mpg while loaded down.
When we woke up the next morning we headed towards Denver with the goal of checking out the city for the day.
Entering CO:
After some food and a brewery we decided to treat ourselves to a nice hotel room, so that we would be rested up for the drive to the San Juans. We woke up at about 7, and headed west on 70. We had been told by a friend to check out the Hanging Lake hike. I will say that it was crowded, and definitely a pretty touristy stop.... but there was a reason for that. It was a nice little introduction to Colorado.
A few shots from Hanging Lake:
Fishy
After the hike we finished out our drive to Ouray. It took awhile, but I finally laid my eyes on the San Juan Mountains for the first time:
I'm a little delayed in posting a trip report, but had quite a bit of work to catch up on when I got home. The goal for this trip was to head out to Colorado with my lovely girlfriend Leigh. She has never been anywhere out west before, so my excitement to show her it's grandness was pretty...grand. I spent most of the spring getting my XJ ready for the trip, and have a build thread on this site if anyone is interested.
The Trip:
We departed on the evening of Thursday June 18th from Wilmington, NC. Our route had us travel a bit north to Richmond, VA so that we could drop this pretty lady off with my parents for the duration of our trip.
Once we were finished up with the dog exchange we set our sights west, and drove through the night. We ended up on the Kansas Colorado boarder around dusk, and decided to catch some shut eye at a campground. Here is the first photo from the trip. It's a shot of me driving into that beautiful red Kansas sun:
The XJ did great on the drive. Anyone who owns an older jeep knows that they aren't perfect highway vehicles, but I was able to maintain 65-75mph the whole trip while getting about 17mpg while loaded down.
When we woke up the next morning we headed towards Denver with the goal of checking out the city for the day.
Entering CO:
After some food and a brewery we decided to treat ourselves to a nice hotel room, so that we would be rested up for the drive to the San Juans. We woke up at about 7, and headed west on 70. We had been told by a friend to check out the Hanging Lake hike. I will say that it was crowded, and definitely a pretty touristy stop.... but there was a reason for that. It was a nice little introduction to Colorado.
A few shots from Hanging Lake:
Fishy
After the hike we finished out our drive to Ouray. It took awhile, but I finally laid my eyes on the San Juan Mountains for the first time:
