Visiting the Switzerland of America! (Ouray, CO) | Box Canyon, Cascade Falls, & Perimeter Trail

A couple days ago we drove the famous million dollar highway from Silverton to Ouray with incredible views and stops along the way. And after exploring part of the Ouray area by jeep yesterday, today we're going to explore the town by foot. Ouray is a small mountain town tucked into the San Juan Mountains which is named after Chief Ouray of the Ute tribe and is nicknamed the Switzerland of America because of its beauty. But many years before this became a popular tourist spot, this area was inhabited by the Ute Native Americans. For centuries the tribe traveled here during the summer months to fish, hunt, and to soak in what they called their sacred miracle waters. In fact, the town's original name was Uncompahgre which is a Ute word for hot water springs. In 1873, Chief Ouray, who was the leader of both the Tabawash and Uncompahgre bands of Southern Ute, reluctantly signed a government treaty releasing their San Juan territory to encroaching settlers and in 1876 the town was incorporated and named in Chief Ouray's honor. Ouray feels like a bigger and slightly busier version of Silverton which is just down the million dollar highway from here. And similar to Silverton, Ouray has a lot of mining history and the downtown area is full of beautiful historic buildings. All along the streets and town here they have these placards here that give you a little bit of a history of the blocks and the buildings that all surround you about how they were built and what kind of changes they had throughout the years. We have a fun walking adventure planned in Ouray today which we'll tell you more about in a minute but first we're going to check out Box Canyon which is a 285 foot waterfall that dumps thousands of gallons of water inside of a narrow canyon. It costs $5 per adult to visit and less for kids and unfortunately dogs are not allowed so Kona is going to sit out this part of today's adventure. In the 1870s early settlers explored this area not because of its beauty but because they thought there was silver ore here. Some of them saw some green markings on the wall that kind of indicated there might be silver. They didn't find very much here so it eventually became a tourist attraction. It's so loud in here! This is what the sound of thousands of gallons dropping in a minute. It's kind of scary. It's like you can feel the power of it. The big column of the waterfall is directly below us right here and then we were standing on the steel frame, on the steel walkway just down here. I don't know if you can see it but maybe. It's right below us. It's pretty nuts. We had heard that Box Canyon was a must visit but it truly exceeded all of my expectations. This tunnel that takes you from the high bridge trail, the bridge over the Box Canyon, comes out the other side which it looks like it's the perimeter trail I'm pretty sure which is actually what we're going to be doing next. The perimeter trail is a 6 mile loop that goes all the way around the town of Uri. You gain about 1500 feet of elevation and you'll get to see 4 waterfalls, 5 bridges and a secret troll under one of the bridges. One of the most interesting things I think or we think about this trail is you're never more than 500 feet vertically above the town or a mile horizontally and there's multiple entry and exit points so if you need to step off for whatever reason, you want to take a break, get some lunch, and then hop back on, you can. So we're going to start at the visitor center and go clockwise around the loop. It's all uphill at first. Wow. Heck yeah. We're at our first major stop on the perimeter trail, Cascade Falls. It's about .9 miles into the trail. This trail is rated moderate on all trails. It's definitely not easy. It's not the hardest trail ever but it's just constantly up and down, up and down to keep you sweaty and keep your heart going. I'm super sweaty and the trail is like dirt, pretty slick dirt and you can get pretty steep going up and down so just be careful. There can be some drop offs too off the side so just watch your step and don't get caught looking off and walking. Yeah, they've used too much. Look at the ground. So we're currently two miles in exactly and we're right here, kind of in the southeast corner of town. We started right up here so we've already gone all that way. We're taking a quick little snack break on this. Nice rock outcropping overlooking this valley here and the other day when we came into town I stopped into Yure Meat and Cheese Market and got a little goodies for our hike today. So this is the mountain man mix. It's cheese and some meat sticks that are cut up there and I got a few more of these beef sticks here. They're actually some of the best ones we've ever had. I got a variety. I got a jalapeno, parmesan, garlic parmesan and a peppered one. They're very tender and flavorful. They're just really good. So we got, like I said, I got three different flavors and threw them all in one bag so it's kind of like a beef stick roulette. What do you think you got? Meat stick roulette. This might be the one garlic and cheese, but it might be pepper. I'm not really sure, but they're really good. Another benefit of the trail is you have a lot of city views and it goes around the city or the town, but you also dip down on the southern end, dip down along the million dollar highway and you're just in the forest, it seems like, away from any civilization so you get forest views and get away from all the city, town, but then you also get the town views along the way. It's a good mix of scenery along the way. We made it down to the Uncompahgre River, rushing right under us on a bridge. There's a waterfall over there. And lots of mosquitoes attacking us. I pulled a muscle on my shoulder from vigorous swatting. Oh god, we're being attacked. We're being attacked. Y'all, they have a via ferrata here. It's right on this rock wall. And let me tell you, if you thought our West Virginia via ferrata looked scary, this one is way more terrifying. There's this wire ladder just dangling from like one top of one rock to the bottom of the other. We kind of want to do it. We're not going to, but we'll have to come back and do it sometime. She doesn't like the great bridges here. If you can see straight down, she's not a fan of them. We're okay. We're back in the tunnel by Box Canyon. So much uphill. We did it. According to all trails, it says it was 6.7 miles, took us three hours and 51 minutes. It was about 1657 feet of elevation gain. What an awesome hike. We've never been to Switzerland before, but what we can say is the San Juan Mountains are absolutely gorgeous and it's one of our favorite places we've ever been in Colorado and the United States in general. It's just mind-blowingly gorgeous here. We have one more hike we want to do in the San Juans, but unfortunately it's still a little bit too snowy, so we're going to try to come back in a little over a week and hope that we can actually do the hike then. But until then, we are headed to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, just like an hour north in Montrose, which is our final, last final, our final new national park in Colorado. So cool. So we just left a camp spot. We're starting off our morning with some elk, some deer, and the best part, a moose sighting. So cool. Baby bathtub, tub, tub, tub, tub, tub, baby bathtub, tub, tub, tub, tub, tub. Sorry if you have that, uh, that song stuck in your head for the rest of time. Baby bathtub, tub, it's addicting, can't stop singing it. Waterfall there. Lots of mosquitoes. Oh, sorry. Lots of mosquitoes. Sorry, you gotta do it over.