Our 6 Stops on an Epic Colorado Adventure
A Road Trip Through Colorado's Southwest Wonders
We’ve been on an epic summer adventure and sharing about the journey in separate parts as we go. We first visited some places in Oklahoma and Texas, then we made our way to a few amazing stops in New Mexico, and then it was time for Colorado!
Colorado is one of our favorite places and we were so excited to get back to some of our favorite spots but also check out some new places! These are the places we visited:
Durango
One of the things I’ve dreamed of doing for ages is taking the Durango to Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad Train. We finally got to make that a reality and it did not disappoint. 😍 The train travels up into the mountains along the Animas River and the views are just beautiful. We even got to experience all types of weather - rain, snow, sleet, and sun. haha!
You also get a couple of hours to explore the town of Silverton and grab some lunch. This is a full day adventure starting at about 9am and arriving back in Durango around 6pm and it just such an incredible experience.
In Durango we splurged and stayed at the Best Western Plus Rio Grande Inn which is just a couple of blocks away from the train station and right near downtown. I say splurged because we normally keep things pretty budget friendly since this is our full-time life. With taxes and fees, this hotel was about $182 a night. 😱 That is NOT budget friendly. That’s about $100 a night MORE than budget friendly. If we spent this much regularly we’d be out of money. lol! It was an awesome place to stay though. They had a happy hour in the evening, a great vibe in the atrium area, and really good breakfast.
We were comfortable splurging with this because we are Capital One Venture X card holders and we get a $300 travel credit each year and we used that plus some travel points to cover the cost of the hotel. We decided it was worth it so we could stay right downtown for a few nights. (If you’re looking for a great card, we really love our Capital One accounts. If you click that link we’ll get a referral bonus too - which helps our travel dollars go further - so we’d be so appreciative. 🫶🏻 )
If you’d like to check out the train journey, we shared parts of the trip on our YouTube channel.
Unaweep-Tabeguache Scenic & Historic Byway
After Durango we were trying to decide which way to head next. We could either go up Highway 550 and visit Silverton (again), Ouray, and then on up to Montrose… or we could go around the mountains and take Highway 491 to Highway 141 and into Grand Junction.
Highway 550 is called the Million Dollar Highway and, while it’s known for it’s amazing views, it’s notorious for being one of the scariest roads because of its steep drop offs, no guardrails, rockslides, and accidents….it sounded a little risky to us. lol! James decided he wasn’t about to drive that highway so out west it was.
The great thing about changing up plans is sometimes you find something else amazing that you didn’t even know was there. That’s what happened on this leg of the trip! We stopped off in Naturita at the visitor center and ended up meeting this really awesome, helpful lady who told us all about this scenic byway. It was the road we were on and planning to take but we had no idea that it had so many amazing things to see.
This scenic byway is so beautiful. There are cool things to see along the way but the canyons that you drive through and the cliffs, mountains, and rock walls that you see on this drive are just absolutely incredible! Pictures don’t do it justice so if you ever find yourself near Highway 141 in western Colorado, this is a must see.
Want to experience it through our eyes? Check out our YouTube video.
Grand Junction
Grand Junction was our next destination. It’s an area we hadn’t been to before and we were excited to check it out and see what the area was like. We were also excited to visit Colorado National Monument - we are huge fans of the National Park Service after all. ;)
We’ve been trying to camp as much as possible on this trip so that we could enjoy the great outdoors a lot more but also so we could keep our daily expenses down. So we looked for a nice place to camp and settled on KOA in Grand Junction. While this place was really nice and had good amenities, it was a little pricey for our taste. It was cheaper than a hotel of course but a little pricey for a campground - especially since we’re just in a tent and just use a tiny bit of electricity and that’s it. We paid right around $60 a night and stayed a couple of nights. It was worth it but we’ve found KOAs to be too expensive most of the time as many of them are even more than that. (We do have a video review of this particular location posted here if you’re interested plus a post review here.)
So after we got our camping situation settled, it was time to explore. We enjoyed checking out the town a little and driving around to see what it was like. But of course the highlight of this area is Colorado National Monument. And let me tell you that place is incredible!
When I think of National Monuments, typically I think of smaller areas with a focus on an event or a person or something but this is a big park with a beautiful scenic drive through the whole thing. I’m surprised this isn’t a regular National Park. The cliffs, canyons, and mountain views are just incredible everywhere you look.
If this hasn’t been on your list of places to go, you should definitely add it. It’s right next to Grand Junction and only took about 10-20 minutes to get to the entrance from our campground so it’s very easy to access. You can get all the info about the park here.
Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park
After Grand Junction we headed south on Highway 50 toward Montrose so we could go visit Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. Now, if I’m being honest, I have to admit that I had never even heard of this park until a couple of years ago. This park was established in 1999 so it’s fairly new compared to many of the parks. But I’d heard that it’s a pretty cool place so we wanted to go see it of course.
To say this park has a wow factor would be an understatement. As we walked up to the first viewing area to look over the canyon, we both just said WOW! I mean, there’s no way to truly capture how amazing this canyon is and how HUGE it is! The canyon is 2,722 feet deep at it’s deepest point - that’s just over half a mile!!! 😳 Granted, it’s no Grand Canyon but it’s pretty incredible. We definitely recommend stopping in for a visit. You can take the scenic drive, you can walk out to various view points, and you can hike trails as well. Learn more about the park here.
Curecanti National Recreation Area
This ended up being a little bit of an unplanned stop but we absolutely loved it. We found this on recreation.gov and realized they had great campgrounds there and it was only about an hour from Black Canyon of the Gunnison NP. So after we finished at the park we headed that way and picked a spot at Elk Creek Campground, paid only $24, and had a great time camping out right by the lake. We got to watch a beautiful sunset too. (It wasn’t busy at all when we were there but you may be better off reserving in advance if you’re traveling there and need a spot on specific nights.)
Pagosa Springs
Pagosa Springs was our last stop in Colorado on this leg of the journey. This is a place where we’ve spent lots of time before and we always love it. We always book a stay at Club Wyndham through our membership with Armed Forces Vacation Club and we get an amazing deal. They have such a great property there and the staff and amenities are both top notch. We definitely recommend staying here if you’d like a condo in town.
We spent a week relaxing, going for hikes, watching the adorable fox babies down the way from our condo, celebrating our 34th wedding anniversary, and just having a good time.
We also did a video about our adventures from Grand Junction all the way to Pagosa Springs so check that out too if you’d like.
So that wraps up part 3 of our big summer adventure! Stay tuned for part 4 soon as we travel into Utah and northern Arizona. :)
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Have you traveled to any of these places? We’d love to know what you thought.