Property search adventure

We started looking for property this weekend, we knew what area would work, so we loaded up and headed out to do some dirt road driving and see what might be available. We've been yearning to be out in the hills for some time and finally had a free weekend. Looking for some property is a chore, only really expensive mountain properties are listed on website and real estate pages so it's a manual search.

Plans start out one way and end up another.

We descended down one mountain range and into a valley into a small town. On the other side of the town and valley was a large mountain range... something about first mountain on the left and straight on until morning. That's where the arrow is pointing towards.

On the way up we stopped to let the boys have some  mountain adventure and pee time. Luke is great off leash but there were some steep sides so I had to guide him up and down. He is so cute walking around in an unknown area high stepping like an Arabian horse so he doesn't trip on things.

Way out in the middle of that picture is the valley floor that we originally descended into (from t he first photo). If you are going to climb a 14,000 foot mountain why not do it in style?

Horseshoe lake down in the depression. There were a total of 3 lakes and I didn't go swimming. I didn't plan on being by a lake at all, let a lone a high altitude set of 3, so no swimming trunks were packed (what kind of prepper am I, right!).

Looking East, where we could no longer continue our journey. The road went up another 1/4 mile (I suppose road is a laughable term) and I'm sure it might actually have gone down the other side (topo map didn't even have the road going past the above pictured lake) but there was a huge snow pile blocking the way.

Nothing unusual at 14,000 feet so we let the dogs out, turned around and let gravity do it's thing for a couple of hours.

Stopped about 1/2 mile down from the top for an alpine flower shot and noticed the clouds swarming the area we just left. The picture of the Discovery doesn't have clouds anywhere near the ridge line.

It rained the entire way down and back into the plains, about 3 hours worth of rain and hail, they are called the wet mountains for a reason. I took a video of the rain on the way out, forgive the sideways portion, I don't have editing software on this laptop.

I was nervous about driving close to the edge and getting sucked into the drainage ditch. At one point down the hill we got close to a Jeep but they took off to show us who's boss and were probably 30 minutes ahead of us... in the drainage ditch. We stopped but nobody was there, it was just full of water since they had no doors or windows in. They certainly showed us how fast they could go!