I was really looking forward to renting a Jeep while we were in Ouray, and exploring some of the old dirt roads that go up and around the San Juan mountains that surround the town. We got our Jeep from Switzerland Of America in town, and tried to get suggestions from them on roads we should take based on our zero-experience jeeping and our normal habitat of flat South Jersey. Perhaps we didn't communicate our inexperience strongly enough - some of their recommended beginner roads really had our adrenaline pumping!
We strapped Mike and his car seat into the front of the Jeep (after turning the air bag off, of course), and headed first to Yankee Boy Basin. This would be a quick shakedown run to "get our Jeeping legs" as they put it. While most of this road was what we were expecting (dirt, bumpy, etc), sections of it were hair-raising for us. The part of the road cut into the rock, in particular, had us doubting the wisdom of this excursion. Trying to steer around large rocks in the road so as not to damage the oil pan while going uphill on a road that tilted into a ravine and had water flowing over it was quite an introduction! At this point I had not yet discovered the benefits of "four wheel low", so it might have been better the second time around. Mike had an absolute blast the entire time - I think Jeeping was his second favorite activity after the pool.
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After our experience at Yankee Boy Basin, we tried to get suggestions for an easier road for the next full day of Jeeping. One of the suggestions was something called 'Corkscrew Pass' - no thanks. We decided to take the easier suggestion, Last Dollar Road into Telluride and then Ophir Pass over to Silverton. Last Dollar Road was about perfect for us - half of it was basically just a dirt road, and the other half was good Jeeping but without the huge dropoffs. Having boosted our confidence we set out for Ophir, which turned out to be much more than we bargained for. There's one section of road that goes across this huge rockslide, and its very narrow and slick. We were stopped by 2 people coming down Ophir (we were going up) that suggested we turn around and either try it the other direction or not at all. We heeded their advice and turned around (which was tricky enough on that narrow ledge).