Day 6: June 18, 2011

At the top of the Black Canyon at the Gunnison National Park

2:38 pm

64 degrees F

Written on Sunday June 19, 2011

So let’s see: on Friday night we stuck to our promise and camped at a K.O.A. in Durango, CO. We didn’t see much of the town that night, but it was kinda fun to get a K.O.A. experience, which is basically “comfortably unrugged” as Teddy put it. They escorted us to our campsite, there was a sawdust bed for our tent, we ordered pizza and they brought it to our site. We arrived too late to use the pool and woke up too late to get the pancake breakfast, but those are there, too. It was like family summer camp or something. It’s quite different from risky camping—we’ve come to realize that there is a difference.

We have been a little bit ahead of slash off of our itinerary, so we had to do a bit of research on how to spend the next two days before meeting my cousin Adrienne in Colorado Springs. Aunt Nin got me this book called One Thousand Things to See Before You Die: America and Canada. I have actually taken most of my trip ideas from this great book—there are places I’ve never heard of including Durango, Silverton and Ouray, Colorado.

Each of these towns has a population under 1,000—their industry is mostly based on tourism. They are picturesque Old West mining towns nestled in the foothills of some incredibly beautiful mountains in the San Juan mountain range. I’ll tell you more about Silverton in a minute, but first I want to write about one of the most unexpected and gorgeous things we’ve seen yet: Molas Pass on the 550 toward Silverton. We went from brutal 105 degree heat in the desert to a chilly and windy 50 something degrees. We were so high up too—at 10,910 feet. There’s snow all over the mountains and we can’t believe that only yesterday we were wiping desert dust out of our ears. It really looks like the Alps.

Durango is more modern than Silverton or Ouray, and we only really drove through it. We stopped for a second at Honeyville to get some fresh, wildflower honey and planned to have lunch in Silverton. I saw a postcard for this awesome looking restaurant called “Handlebars”. It was the ideal “Saloon” from the Old West. Tons of ridiculous taxidermy creatures hung all over the walls. They served beer in jars and served real maple syrup sarsaparilla. Some fun pictures below. I got over my fear of odd meat, once again, to try the Buffalo Burger…so delicious! It was awkward that a stuffed Bison was watching me from right above our table…

After lunch, we walked all through town on our first relatively relaxing day of the trip. We found old-timey shops with old-timey tools. We, especially Teddy, love old-timey stuff, so a trip through the Silverton town and mining museum/historical society was really cool. Check out the pictures of us in the jail (holding a ball and chain ::har har::), Teddy playing an old-timey piano with his best “old-timey face”, and a cool film projecter.

We also found a lovely town mascot named Zeke—he’s a bull terrier and was fat like a pig. We took a couple of pictures especially for Teddy’s nephew, Ryan, of the real-life coal-and-steam-run train. “Happy Birthday, Choo Choo!”

We found out we had arrived in Silverton for the one-night-only “Taste of Silverton” event—all the restaurants set out little stands in the middle of town where you could buy food for a ticket ($1 each). There were people dressed in Victorian dresses and guys in full old cowboy gear. On some level, we really didn’t even know if these guys were dressed up or if they really just wore that stuff every day. It was pretty cute. They were having a low-key staged gunfight at the end of town—less exciting than it sounds. We met some really nice people all throughout the town and they were ALL there at the food fair. At that moment, we realized just how small the town was—it was a little Twilight Zone-y.

After dinner, we drove a perilous but spectacular road called “The Million Dollar Highway”—apparently it cost a million to build. Now, it just “looks like a million bucks”. It is the most dangerous road in Colorado—hairpin turns and no guard-rails whatsoever. Mountains are carved out to make tunnels, there is constant fear of rock-fall, and below you is a sheer drop to a rushing (and I mean, really rushing) river. I was pretty white-knuckled the whole time, but it was so, so beautiful. Snow-capped mountains reached high above the lush, green forest and there were waterfalls streaming down the massive cliff faces.

We tried and failed to find a campground in the forest—at one point, we found a site only accessible by 4-wheel drive. We thought we’d take a whack at it and ended up terrified of the 45-degree angle climb up rocky ditches. We figured it might be possible to bring our items above this treacherous hill to camp, but it was too far and there were a few weirdos up there. Remote + weirdos= not good. But, a Great Dane raced up to me and wanted to play fetch, so I thought the climb was worth it. Also—best sighting ever—a yellow-bellied marmot. It’s basically a lazy beaver/groundhog who is fat. Hilarious.

Now in Ouray, “The Switzerland of America” (dubbed so because of the mountains described above), we tried to find lodging for the evening. We had been so good about planning our sleeping spots, but now, off our route, we were kind of at a loss. Finally, we gave up on camping for the night and decided to try out “The Timber Ridge Lodge”—a side of the road motel. Ouray thrives on tourists and really jacks up the prices on hotels/motels, so this 1 star was a bit more than we wanted to spend—but with free wifi, really nice staff and a general sense of cleanliness, we felt pretty comfortable. Also, the Lodge was a hop, skip, and a jump from the Ouray Hot Springs! We jumped in our swimsuits and took a 15 minute hike to the hot springs—an Olympic sized, 3 foot deep, pool with different zones of about 70, 80 and 100 degrees respectively. The pools left something to be desired in terms of a “natural” environment—it was more or less a public pool. But, it was so relaxing and wonderful to soak in my first ever hot spring.