the san juan river, ribs, and a lovely sunset - friday, 6/23/06

we were home from the great balloon adventure by 10:30, and linda and chuck were ready to go on another hike. today's adventure would be climbing up to 4 mile falls, which was apparently the highest falls in colorado. they had made sandwiches for us and were waiting for our return. however, both pam and i decided we had done enough hiking for one day, so we sent the park service gypsies out on their own adventure while we stayed home.

pam took a nap while i wrote down all the stuff that had been happening all week. i had neglected to do that up to that point, and as i am sitting here typing this, i am thankful for the notes i took. already pam is saying she can't remember stuff we did or what we bought where, and i can relate. however, the little pocket notebook with the notes in it has become invaluable in creating this blog.

we ate leftovers from the night before and then decided to head into pagosa springs for some more shopping and hanging out. we checked out a few shops, but didn't buy anything, and decided we wanted to go down to the river and get our feet wet. we parked at the springs visitors center and wandered down and out on the rocks. the water was a bit cold and we just talked and hung out for awhile. there were kids playing in the water and on the other side people were walking and hanging out on the public side of the springs. we got lost coming out of the parking lot (i was trying to rely on shortcuts and only did a long cut instead). we came back into town and parked the car in the public lot, got out and went down to the one public hot springs that was along the sidewalk. we put our feet in it for awhile and then went up and dipped our hands back in the one at the top of the stairway by the parking lot.

we had decided to go out to dinner that night to get ribs at THE BRANDING IRON. the food was pretty good, but my ribs were like shoe leather and i actually had them return them and bring me chopped beef brisket. they had good marinated carrots (not as good as hers, according to linda!) and coleslaw. on the porch there was a cool set up for plants, which we ended up taking pictures of, hoping to duplicate it when we got home.

there was a beautiful sunset that night and i took off in bare feet trying to chase the storm that we never got! we got some really glorious pictures, both of the sunset and ourselves! we yapped awhile and packed awhile and hit the bricks.