This past week, my wife and I took a few days off to visit southwestern Colorado...
An empty stretch of highway near Cuba, New Mexico:
We went through Durango to the Purgatory ski area (a.k.a. Durango Mt. Resort), rode the lift up...
...rode the alpine slide...weeee!
...then walked down a mountain-bike trail:
We camped a night at Molas Lake:
Silverton (population ~530), rustic and charming (see it soon, before it becomes another Telluride...ugh):
We drove our sedan as far as we could up the road toward Yankee Boy Basin (outside of Ouray), then took to foot. Here's an old mining ladder:
We hiked ~1.5 miles before a nice family in a four-wheel-drive SUV offered to drive us the last mile. We gratefully piled in and were chauffeured here (~12,000 ft.):
At that point, we were a little worried about time, rain, and our energy reserves, so we hiked back down to the car, checked into the Ouray Hotel, and swam in the town's mineral hot springs pool till thunder forced everyone out. I'd like to go back (perhaps in a rented Jeep) someday and hike around the top...maybe ascend Mt. Sneffels (14,150 ft.).
Wow. Molas Lake looks incredible. And it looks like you can drive there! Oh, but I'm sure it's really quite terrible and nobody should ever go there... (nudge nudge wink wink)
Molas Lake is hiding in plain sight a few miles south of Silverton (it's actually a Silverton public park). It was such a pretty spot, we scratched our previous plans and camped lakeside. But you're right, the lake smells of sulfur and the black clouds of mosquitos made our stay miserable (nudge nudge wink wink).
Sounds awful. I hope I never have to go there.