Traveling Huntleys

Inspiring travel stories, tips, and guides from a couple exploring the world one destination at a time.

Dolores

Dolores, Colorado and Mesa Verde National Park

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Last Updated: July 20, 2026

Dolores is a small but historically rich town tucked into the southwest corner of Colorado at an elevation of about 6,900 feet. Telluride and Durango are roughly an hour’s drive to the east, while Utah’s canyon country begins just to the west. What makes Dolores such a remarkable base is the sheer concentration of world-class archaeological sites within a short drive — Mesa Verde National Park, Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, and Hovenweep National Monument are all within 30 minutes. We last visited southwestern Colorado about two years earlier in the spring, and returning in fall revealed a completely different side of this landscape. The area is steeped in the culture of the Ancestral Puebloans — known historically as the Anasazi — who built some of North America’s most extraordinary stone dwellings here centuries ago.

Ancient stone ruins at Canyons of the Ancients National Monument near Dolores, Colorado, with walls of hand-laid sandstone blocks still standing after nearly a thousand years
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Pagosa Springs, Durango, Colorado

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Last Updated: July 20, 2026

Pagosa Springs sits at about 7,000 feet in the southern San Juan Mountains, tucked just north of the New Mexico border on the west side of the Continental Divide. That position gives it a milder climate than most of Colorado — over 300 sunny days per year and winters that don’t punish the way they do at higher elevations to the north. The town’s name comes from the Ute word “Pagosah,” meaning “healing waters,” a reference to the remarkable geothermal hot springs that have drawn people here for centuries. The Mother Spring in Pagosa Springs holds a Guinness World Record as the deepest geothermal hot spring aquifer on Earth, at over 1,000 feet deep. Combine that with its position as a gateway to the San Juan Mountains and Durango’s high-altitude Jeep country, and you have one of the most rewarding stops in all of southwestern Colorado.

A weathered barn with metal roof and abandoned tractor amid fall foliage near Pagosa Springs, Colorado, with the San Juan Mountains in the background
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