Purgatory Trail -- Durango, CO

While Dustin and I were up in New Mexico this summer we decided to have a night out without the kids. Grandma Janie watched Makenna and Hollis and Dustin and I went up to Durango, CO to go on an overnight hike. I had only done this hike once before with Dustin and it is honestly one of the prettiest places on earth. Dustin used to go camping here with his buddies growing up. They actually carved their initials in some of the Aspen trees at the bottom of the canyon. Dustin still know just exactly how to get to those trees and that is where we set up camp for the night. It wasn't the prettiest spot at the bottom of the canyon, but we just barely made it down there before it got dark and Dustin is familiar with that area -- there is a creek that runs through right by the camp. Dustin pumped and filtered all our water while we were at the bottom of the canyon. I got him this water filter thing a couple of years ago for Christmas and that was the first time I had ever seen it used -- I couldn't believe how well it worked and how cold and fresh the water was. It was a good thing we had it cause we filled our water bottles up often and I wouldn't have wanted to pack all that water in. I am not much of a hiker, but apparently Dustin is. My idea of camping is just getting away together and relaxing -- maybe sitting and watching Dustin fish and just talking. Dustin has a whole other idea of camping. He decided that the one day we were there that we would hike all day. We started out our morning at about 6am at what I thought was just going to be a nice morning hike, but it was so much more than that. That morning we thought we could smell elk bedded down somewhere and we saw a lot of droppings. We stayed in that area for a long time to see if we would be able to spot any elk, but we never saw any. What we did spot was 6 different ticks on Dustin -- creepy! We hate ticks! Then Dustin decided that we needed to hike all the way to where this creek met up with the Animus River. Hiking that much in one day pretty much kicked my butt. When we got to the Animus River I decided I would soak my feet in the ice cold water before we headed back. On our way back, Dustin decided he wanted to fish at his favorite fishing whole. After the fishing we headed back to camp to pack it up and then we had to hike back out of this canyon. I don't think I had ever hiked so much in one day. Towards the end I was having to stop about every minute just to catch my breath. It felt so nice when we finally got to the truck and I could put my heavy pack down. We hiked all day -- from 6am to 6pm when we got to the truck!