I could have stayed even longer at Colter Bay in Grand Teton National Park, but....it was time to leave. We drove south through Wyoming, and on to Provo, UT, for an overnight stay. Then on through Utah where we passed right by Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park. We have been to both, but this is definitely NOT the time of year one wants to go there! As we were passing through Moab, it was about 97 degrees. When we reached Colorado it was still hot, but not quite as intense.
We have been in Durango, CO, for several days. It has been many years since we were here. We came here as part of a vacation with our kids in the mid '70's, and Durango has changed a lot! The neat thing is, the train is still running. It is now a National Historic Landmark, and is a must-do when here. So this was our second trip on the Durango-to-Silverton Narrow Gauge Train. They have more options now. We chose to ride a tour bus up to Silverton and take the train back, rather than the train both ways.
Silverton is still a charming old gold and silver mining town and we viewed it as a cross between Dawson City, Yukon Territory, and Skagway, Alaska. Very touristy, but a sense of history is conveyed by the buildings, the unpaved side streets, the trains, and the mine tailings and ruins that can be seen all over. There is no compromise with the operation of the train - it is still pulled by steam engines burning coal (but they must be scrubbing because the smoke is not as black as it otherwise would be and no sparks). They run three trains a day at the height of the season. It is a slow, unsmooth ride - the tracks are anything but flat, but it is very scenic along the Animas River. As those who have taken this train know, there is one spot that is nothing short of thrilling. The train route was blasted out of a cliff with the river far below. The train slows to about 2 mph as it crawls along the cliff. Of course I couldn't get a photo of this myself, so I bought a postcard and took a photo of the postcard, to show this piece of the track.
The train - the rest are my photos.
Scenes around Silverton
There is a great museum right next to the round house in Durango which we toured.
The round house that we saw in the '70's burned down, but they rebuilt it and refurbished the engines that were inside at the time of the fire in 1989.
Yesterday we trekked 80 miles west to see Hovenweep National Monument, on Cajon Mesa on a huge expanse of sagebrush with very little population in the area. We retreated from the idea of camping overnight at Chaco Canyon to the south due to the rains and the heat that the area is getting. While we had been to Chaco, we had never seen Hovenweep. It was a very worthwhile trip and stimulated a lengthy conversation about these Ancestral Puebloans (formerly called Anasazi): where they came from, why they were here at all, why they aggregated here, why they left, who their competitors were, where those competitors came from, etc. Certainly changing climate and drought played a perpetual role in their constant migration, as did possible warring either among themselves or with other peoples. What is known is that Chaco was a little earlier in establishment, and the ruins seen at Hovenweep were built in the mid 1200's in canyons where there were water sources. These were agricultural people who needed land for growing corn, a reliable source of water, and some security. They may have achieved this for awhile, but by the late 1200's they left. The Hopi, Zuni and other Puebloans are acknowledged as their descendants. So these ruins were used for only about 50 years.
There are ruins all over the Four Corners area. Hovenweep is a significant area and what is left there may be but a small part of what was once there.
We walked the 2 mile loop near the visitor center where there were some other people, but then we drove on some dirt roads and hiked in to see some other ruins, and there was not another soul around - very good! (I was going to say, Very cool, but it was anything but cool!!)
We sat on a rock right by this little ruin for awhile - the only sound was the breeze and a few birds.
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