I think @AllenAA's suggestion to use Shell COM objects is one of, if not the best, solution for changing the Explorer's path. Of course if more than one Explorer window was open, the example that he provided would've changed the path of all of those Explorer windows. The example below shows how to open a new Explorer window and only manipulate that specific window. If using COM is the accepted solution for this topic, then credit should go to @AllenAA for suggesting it, not me. I'm simply providing a more detailed example to help the original poster understand how a single Explorer window can be manipulated - as was requested in his original post.
Example: (Click below to view)