We're stuck!

Our first five days in Colorado have been wonderful. We started off staying with some friends in Bayfield, just outside of Durango. We spent our first day just catching up, relaxing with friends, and just watching movies at home. We had the chance to play frisbee golf at Fort Lewis College (Ty's alma mater) with a great backdrop of the mountains, we sampled some of the best bar-b-que in Colorado (Serious Texas BBQ) and took walking and driving tours of Durango to check it out as a potential place to live. It's still high on our list, but we still have a great deal to look at! We also spent a night up at Durango Mountain Inn and watched the amazing peaks of the surrounding Twighlight Mountains at dusk.

Today, Thursday, threw us for our biggest loop thus far. After checking out Pagosa Springs as a potential, we continued to head East up over Wolf Creek Pass. Our sweet little Honda, Birdie, suddenly started revving and, with eight more hours of driving to go until Fort Collins, simply stopped going into gear. Of course, the spot where we had to pull over had no cell phone service, so Ty was the hero of the day and strapped on his running shoes, ran a few miles to the nearest pay phone, and called AAA. We were towed to Monte Vista, population 4,733 (including horses and cows), where we found out that our transmission had completely died. After a pow-wow at the only open restaurant in the town, we decided to spend the money to wait for a new transmission, rather than think about buying a new car. Unfortunately, we're stuck here until Saturday ... or maybe Monday. So we're shacking up in a tiny little motel next to the local drive-in, where we'll watch "The Bucket List" from our hotel room window.

Other than our slight side-track, we're still having a great time and are in high spirits. Hills is loving training at altitude for her first marathon in August, and Ty is having a great time being on vacation. Aspen is getting over her slightly whiney stage and is getting a few new teeth. She's happy to have "Dogga" and "Baby" back after Mom left them at home before we left. Oops :).

We'll keep you updated on our car - hopefully we'll be out of here soon!