The Million Dollar Highway, Anizasi Cliff Dwellings and the Animas River

Ok, time to head south to more sights.  Since we wanted to see Mesa Verde we booked a hotel in Durango for the last two nights of the trip. The road between Montrose and Durango is beautiful.  It meanders through the town of Ouray on the million dollar highway. 

Ouray is called the Switzerland of the US.  Every house is an A-frame.  

 There is even a mountain seen from the highway that looks like the Matterhorn. 

The highway runs through the San Juan National Forest, goes through the town of Silverton and past the Telluride Ski Resort.  

The highway has a lot of pull-outs to take pictures at all the sights – mountains, valleys, waterfalls and old mining remains.

We spent Thursday seeing the amazing sights of Mesa Verde. 

 This is a national park built around the remains of the cliff dwellings of the Anasazi Indians. 

Similar to Black Canyon, we would drive from vista to vista to see the cliffs in this area as well as the dwellings built among the cliffs.  

We were actually able to take a tour into one of the more elaborate dwellings. 

Going out to dinner in Durango reminded me of being in a rough old western town from the movies. We stopped by the fly shop Duranglers and asked about the fishing.  They said they recommended dries, streamers or even nymphs on the Animas River.  The trout aren’t too selective they said.  After dinner we scouted out places to fish the next morning.  The Animas River is strewn full of large boulders with few real runs. There was an access point just south of town that seemed to have the best looking water. Even though the weather was nice, in the mornings it was freezing.  Nevertheless we headed out early and gave the river a shot.  We fished upstream and downstream, switching from dries to streamers and then nymphs-not even a strike. We did however, get painted by a ladies club of artists that also thought that spot of the river looked picture perfect.

On our drive back to the hotel we noticed a guide with a couple of clients.  They were fishing what looked like the only deep run in that stretch of water.  I pulled over to watch.  They were using nymphs under split shot and a strike indicator.  You can imagine my surprise when one of the clients hooked one and the guide netted the 15 inch rainbow. Even more surprising was in the few minutes I was pulled over to watch, he caught a second trout in the exact same spot.  The other client hadn’t caught one.  This seemed to be the one spot with actively feeding fish.  That’s the advantage of hiring a guide; they know exactly where in a long stretch of water the fish will be feeding.  I wish we had a couple more hours but it was getting late and we both had long drives ahead of us.  Especially Nick - all the way back to Cincinnati in time to take his son to six peaks for Halloween.