Colorado National Parks (2)
September 24-30, 2006
| The first day in Durango was dedicated for a visit to
Mesa
Verde (green table if you want to be literal about it).
Mesa Verde is about 45 minutes from Durango. The park entrance is right below a very startling view of the mesa. In actual fact, Mesa Verde is 5 different Mesas, separated by a series of canyons that you can't see from here. Once you enter the park, you have another hours drive (15 miles of very twisty road) to get to the visitors center. |
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While everybody knows Mesa Verde for the cliff dwellings, what impressed us was the scenery. Of course, there's only about 1 week a year that you get this much color. |
| From the top of the North facing mesa, you get some spectacular views. I believe this is looking towards Utah (and you probably can see that far, but the camera might not cut through that much haze). However, we twisted around so much, I won't guarantee which direction this is. |
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From the visitors' center, you can get an excellent view of the cliff dwellings. This year is Mesa Verde's 100th anniversary as a National Park, so there are a lot of people here (as you can see). |
| We walked down to the dwellings. Except for some clean
up (picking up loose stones) and minor repair, these are pretty much as
found in the late 1800's. While there were many people here, as you
can see, it's not a problem to get in close. Nobody knows why the Pueblo's moved from up on the Mesa down here. My personal favorite theory is too many harsh winters on top. Our guide thought they moved down to get closer to the water. In any case, they lived here for about 400 years (of the documented 3200 years of their history). They then moved out before any Europeans were in the neighborhood. |
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As promised, the trail up (about 1/4 mile) was much harder than the trail down. We're only at 8000' here, so there was "enough" air to breath, but since most of us were flat-landers, it was a struggle. |
| We left Durango the fun way, on the Durango-Silverton train. We got to the station at 7:50, got on the train, and I walked forward. This is what was happening just as I got there. They keep the engines in the round house, so here they are coupling up our engine. (It's the classic inside frame 2-8-0 narrow gauge engine, and in as good shape as the day it left the maker's shops.) |
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Our tour company (CSU factors this tour out to Falcon Tours) buys their tickets 1 year in advance. So, we (collectively) have the eastern edge of 2 adjacent cars, one closed, the second open. We elected the open car, and then put on 3 layers (earmuffs and gloves too) for the ride up. The views are spectacular, the breeze isn't too bad (because the train only goes 20 mph). |
| Most of the way up, we couldn't see the front of the train because either the track was straight, or the trees obstructed the view. However, there is this one spot where we have to curve around this point, and you get an excellent view. Since the train has to slow down to about 5 miles an hour, there was plenty of time for people to swap positions and we all got good pictures. |
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As you can see, at this point the tracks are well above the river.
We follow the river all the way along, both Durango and Silverton are at
river level, but since the train needs to restrict itself to a 2% grade,
we've had to move way up here. In the 40 miles between Durango and Silverton, the train climbs 3000', and it works hard most of the way up. We had to stop 3 times for more water. |
| Silverton was a mining town until 1981. However, at this point, it is only a tourist town. This is the oldest remaining building in town (it's now a commercial photographer). This is the "bad" part of town, just behind us is a restaurant which had a sign in the window. "This was the best brothel in town. Unfortunately, that service is no longer available, but we still have real good food." |
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Leaving Silverton, we went over the Red Mountain Pass (11,081'), then headed downhill into Ouray (pronounce that your-ray and you'll get it right). Here's a picture of the valley as we went down hill. Once again, the scenery is gorgeous (even if this picture is a mixture of greens, we saw a lot of yellows, oranges and even some reds). |
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