We have been looking forward to this trip all Spring! Jenny’s brother Chad is getting his Masters in Accounting at the University of Texas and he was only going to have a couple weeks off between the end of the semester and his internship at Ernst & Young in Austin. We wanted to plan a family vacation, and since everyone has dogs, we wanted a vacation they could all come to also. So Chad, Autumn, and Tybee (their Standard Poodle,) would be coming from Austin, Mom was working on a movie in Albuquerque, and Charles and Mungo (their Border Terrier) would be in El Paso. We decided on Durango, Colorado, while a bit of a trek for everyone except Mom, it’s near some of Chad’s favorite fly fishing territory in the country. Plus, the hiking areas are off leash and the town is very dog friendly.
The first task was trying to find a house that would take 6 people and 6 dogs. Some people didn’t even write us back. But we finally found a gem just outside the city. The house was amazing, and just asked for an upgraded deposit — definitely a fair trade! We all arrived on Monday and couldn’t believe how perfect the home was! It is on the side of a mountain and the dogs had a whole mountain to climb. Halo and Tybee were too funny. Anytime we’d try to bring them in the house, they’d be back at the back door within minutes begging for us to let them back out. They would take off on a hike and only come back down if we called them. Apparently, there are 10,000 chipmunks in the rocks and trees above the house and they were on a mission to find every last one of them! Luckily, no chipmunks were harmed in the making of this vacation 🙂
We found some awesome trails for hikes every day and the humans were able to mountain bike while the pups ran along side. We were careful to find trails with a water source since it is already pretty hot, and the dogs loved being able to jump in and out of the creeks. We also found time for fly fishing — it was Marc’s first time and Chad was an excellent teacher! Marc even caught his first trout 🙂
We went out to dinner a couple nights, but for the most part just made our own meals at home for maximum family time. We are headed home today with 4 exhausted dogs and a whole bunch of new memories — this may just need to be a family tradition! And the views on the road trip are to die for!
