Silverton Colorado

     Well I got a little out of order on our blog. I’ll now try and continue in order of our travel.  See our 6/19/16 blog post on pictures getting to Ignacio Colorado.

     Wow what a neat ride to getting here to Ignacio Colorado. We are staying at the Sky Ute Casino. Our intent was to stay here for two days, but we ended up staying twelve days. This park is about ten miles outside of the town of Durango. Part of the reason for our extended stay was because of the Casino RV Park, I’ll get to that in our next blog.

     We had been in the Durango area before for just a day or two, this time we wanted to explore the area a little more.   We had done the Durango Silverton train ride, but this time we drove the road to Silverton. There were so many great pull offs with great views. When we finally got to Silverton it was lunch time. At least the temperatures were cooler. We looked for the Mustache Saloon rated in the top five on Trip Adviser. What a neat place  for lunch. Linda took way to many photos. The food was very good. We got there just in time as a train pulled in shortly after we were seated. I guess a lot of folks use Trip Adviser. After our bellies were full we walked around town and had a lot more time to spend there then we had intended. We were planning on going to Quray which had some major road construction along the way. You see part of the road “fell off”.  Here much of the roads around Silverton and Quray are blasted out of the rock walls. One section just fell off down into someplace. There was only one lane open, but there were delays waiting for oncoming traffic to pass. At times the delays were longer then we liked waiting while another section was being blasted out of the side on the mountain and the road was cleared.  I didn’t like the thought of being 1000’s of feet on the edge of the road while that was happening. We knew we could get to Quray when we were in the Montrose area and could drive over from there. So after visiting every touristy store, we did walk some of the off the beaten path roads. The trains aren’t in town long enough for the tourist to visit all the out of the way places. It was nice not to be in a rush. This is so nice when you are not in a rush to get to your next destination and you know you have a place to sleep as long as you can get back to your RV. This is just one of the many advantages to rving. But all you folks reading this and aren’t Rver’s, don’t start now, as there are just too many of us now. Just kidding. Anyone wanting advice on rving are always welcome to email us, and we would only be too happy to share our experience.



 

The Durango Silverton train along the Animas River.

I believe this is a car that follows the train with water tanks in case the ash from the train should start a fire along the tracts, at least that's what we were told.

The town of Silverton, the train just about in the center of the photo

The town of Silverton, RV Park in the center of photo, the train bottom center

 The Mayflower Mill, used for gold and silver mining

Beautiful view

Note the road is on the left and then curves all the way to the right side of the photo, note no guard rails

Alpine lakes/ponds

Growing between the cracks in the rocks

  The dinning car on the train looks almost empty

The town with a RV Park, center right

The place we had lunch, just off the main street

Waiting for lunch

 A giant moose burger

We needed desert for energy to walk around town

A great day for a ride

I believe this was the Grand Imperial hotel

Liked the sign, and the saloon

Train in town

Sign tells the story

 

Interesting

Bench made out of Harley parts

I bet we all know some people who belong to this society

 

 Now that's a snow plow

Haviland day use area with a very nice campground on the way to Silverton, The San Juan National Forest

Don't want to run into one of theses guys

some mule deer