No dog news lately…just waiting for one last show or two before the end of the year. Nash has gone full monty for the most part so I’m not feeling too hopeful LOL! But it will be nice to get away and visit with friends, and isn’t that half the fun anyway?

Since I haven’t been busy with dog shows, we’ve taken the opportunity this fall to take a couple of family trips to enjoy our new home state. Most recently, we went to Durango this past weekend when the kids had a couple of days off school for teacher work days…what a lovely area. I had been there many years ago but didn’t remember much about it. The San Juan mountains are incredibly beautiful! We were blessed with mostly good weather and took as much advantage of it as we could. Saturday we rode the narrow gauge railway from Durango to Silverton (historic mining town).

The original (1923) steam locomotive that pulled our train

Jack (and Charlie too) really enjoyed looking out the window

Engine rounding a curve

It’s about a 3 hour ride each way and really takes you through some amazing scenery in the San Juan National Forest. It was raining when we got to Silverton, but the clouds broke up right as we were leaving for the return trip and blessed us with some pretty awesome views:

Clouds still lingering around the peaks with a little fresh snow

Hanging out the window

On Sunday the weather was perfect…about 73 degrees and sunny. We had hoped to go horseback riding but the trails were too muddy, so we decided to take a hike instead. Our destination:

Spud Lake - 9,800 feet elev.

Overall, a most perfect weekend really. Yes, we did hit a deer on Saturday night while driving back to our rental cabin. Dinged up the car pretty well but thankfully it’s still drivable, and doubly thankful that it didn’t cause a larger wreck and/or injuries. Deer basically ran headlong into the side of our car near the passenger-side front wheel. Big dent in the fender, scratches and dents on the bar going up the windshield and on both passenger-side doors. C’est la vie.