Colorado 2002Part 4: Silverton, Durango, Royal Gorge
For our last afternoon in the Silverton area we stopped at "The Deli" for sandwiches to go, met the owner, who is yet another fascinating musician; we bought two of his CD's and set off for one more hike. Amazingly, this time the map actually was right and the plan worked!
At dinner that night (at Natalie's) we heard the train had been temporarily stopped due to the fires. Interesting reactions - most of the townspeople were very concerned about the economy since the trains are much like cruise ships, bringing in thousands of guests each day for a few hours. But others sighed in relief and seemed just as glad to have a respite from the hoards! We were never there in the middle of the day (we were off hiking) so hadn't observed the onslaught until Tuesday when we boarded the train ourselves. The cruise ship analogy is very apt.
That was about it. Friday we drove to Lincoln, which was memorable only for the great meal we had that evening at the Grotto (a downtown pub) and Saturday we went on home. It was a good trip - mostly relaxing. We both got to do things we enjoyed, meet some interesting people and forget about work for a couple of weeks! Click here to return to the Colorado index |
Tuesday
morning (day 9) we checked out, drove out to Molas Lake (left) just
outside of Silverton; hiked there for
an hour or so, had lunch at Mad Mama's and then took the train down to
Durango. As we had expected, the scenery was great. In our open car,
towards the back of the train, was a family
of 4 girls, one of whom must have been somehow related as she was a
clone of
Kethra (our youngest granddaughter). She kept John entertained (at his
encouragement,
and to the relief of her parents) the whole time explaining everything
in great detail.
They had just been to Mesa Verde National Park and she knew all about
the Pueblo Indians and just
about anything else you cared to hear about!
It
was a very pleasant trip until we neared
Durango and came within half a mile or so of the Missionary Ridge fire.
It was
very sobering to watch the trees explode and new "hot spots" start up
on the side of the hill coming down into the valley. [In fact, the next
day, they closed
down the train for a least a couple of weeks.]
I felt rather uncomfortable being a tourist watching this
awful
blaze, seeing the helicopters dropping, literally, buckets of water on
a forest fire.
Admittedly
we were only in Durango overnight and it was marred by the dense smoke
smell, but I was not real impressed with it. It's a pretty large city
and I vastly preferred the small town feel of
Silverton. They do have a nice Trolley that runs up and down Main Ave.
regularly, making it easy for people to get around and we had a
terrific meal that night at Chez
Grandmere. Owned and run by a French chef, trained in Belgium (I
think), it
was as good as the fine meals we had in Paris. John had all 6 courses,
I settled for 3! It was as expensive as Paris, too, but I
guess that's to
be expected!
The
next morning (Wednesday) we picked up muffins and baked goods for
breakfast and took the trolley
back downtown to the depot where we got the bus back to Silverton.
In Durango, it was so smokey that
you couldn't even see the mountains about a mile away! 
The
road trip takes a somewhat different
route than the train and, once we got out of the smoke, the scenery
again was marvelous. Molas Pass on the left and Turk's Cap to
the right were a couple of the highlights.
We went out to South
Mineral Creek Campground
just north of town and found Clear Lake Trail Road. It needed a high
clearance
vehicle to drive it (remember that by this time, we are carrying several hundred pounds of
rocks - weighing down
the back of the van quite a bit) so we walked. We knew we didn't have time to
do the whole thing, so we went up (and I do mean "up"!) the road about
a mile
and took Ice Lake Trail from there. Just a little way past that
intersection was Clear Creek which we followed all the way back down -
about a mile. There were lots of little rapids and waterfalls and just loads of
flowers and lovely views. That
ended up at the campground about half a mile easy walk along the road
to where we left the car. Well, John got distracted along South Mineral Creek so I continued on to get the car and then drove
back to pick him up with his latest rock pile! 
Thursday we left
around 9:30 but made one last stop at a mine site MaryAnn (Alma House
owner) told us about just south of town. It
was drivable so easy to reach. About an hour later we headed back up to
Ouray and stopped at Timberline Deli again
for some great avocado sandwiches to take along. We went back via Hwy
50 and took the short detour to the Royal Gorge,
nominally the highest suspension bridge in the world.
Both of us had visited it many many years ago and remembered the cool
bridge. Well, in the name of "economic development"
it has now been turned into an amusement park! 
The wooden bridge is
still there (John standing on it to the right) and we got to drive over
it;
but there is a huge admission fee (I talked the attendant into halving
it) that covers "all rides!" So you can take
the tram/ cable car across the gorge, or the inclined railway down into
the gorge, or ride the carousel, or go
see any number of displays. Of course there are numerous gift shops and
restaurants as well as a video game
center and some sort of Indian settlement area. It was all rather
depressing. We drove over the bridge, walked back to a couple of
overlooks (looking down into the gorge in picture on the left) and
tried to imagine what it would be like in peace and tranquility - and
then drove on to Colorado Springs where we spent the night.