Brand new remote and quiet mountain view guest house in the Wet Mountain Valley

My husband and I had the opportunity to spend the last week in August here to vacation away from Iowa! The weather was warm but not humid at all! In fact we had a hard time adjusting to the aridity in the air the first couple of nights.

The cabin is very quaint and lovely on the inside with terracotta tile throughout which made us grab for our warm socks in the morning! We were a little worried because the cabin is not air conditioned (something that we cannot live without in Iowa!) but the nights got cool enough that it wasn't an issue at all. Like mentioned before there is not a range or oven in the cabin which wasn't really an issue for us. We used the side burner on the gas grill most mornings to make pancakes and we also had a 2 burner coleman stove that was helpful because the hotplate didn't seem to be working when we stayed there. Hot water is not an issue and there is a small apt style washer and dryer unit which was very nice for washing our dirty clothes after a day on the trail. There is also wifi which made uploading daily pictures to flickr a breeze!

There is a lot of hiking to be done in the San Isabel National Forest but make sure you have a 4 wheel drive vehicle/ ATV/ Off road package as well as are willing to use that vehicle to drive up some fairly steep and rocky mountainsides to get to the trailheads. We had an older 4 wheel drive (not a Z71) Silverado but we still had some difficulty on the roads leading up to the trailheads which wasn't fun because it added an extra 3 to 5 or so miles to our hikes. Luckily there is a place in Salida to rent off road Jeeps if you don't have a capable vehicle.

A great hike that we would recommend in the area is the Mosca pass down to the Great Sand Dunes National Park. You can EASILY drive up to the pass (only about 9,700 ft), even in a 2 wheel drive car - and the hike is 3.25 miles down to the park. The sand dunes are definitely something amazing to see if you can squeeze in a day for it. We also did about 15 miles round trip up to the Crestone lakes, point and needle. It was breathtaking.

Westcliffe is a nice town with all of the necessary amenities - gas stations, supermarket, coffee shop, liquor store. It has some nice shops on main street as well as a natural food store which my husband and I appreciated (we are vegan).

Overall the cabin is beautiful. The valley is picturesque and other than a better off road vehicle to get to the trailheads, we couldn't have asked for much more