Durango-Silverton Railroad

Miles Wednesday: 47

Hours in the saddle: 1:30ish

Hours on a train: 3:25

Wednesday we rode to Durango to check out the Durango-Silverton railroad. Because of the fire danger, they couldn’t run the steam engine for the regular route because it generates sparks. So instead they were offering a shorter route with a stop in Cascade Canyon using the diesel engine. We got open air gondola seats. 

The total time commitment was 5 hours, so it was worth it to change out of gear. It started raining and Juli was stressed about coming back to wet gear, but it was fine. We went to get lunch before the train and looked for lodging. Laundry day was upon us. Jaron wanted to see what KOA was all about, and they have laundry, so that’s what we decided to do for the night. 

There were some giggly teenybobbers and their moms in our train car. Jaron pointed out a bear crossing the river. They all ran over to look and completely screamed their heads off about it. Later, one of the moms saw a tree fall and yelled OMG and kept saying that no one believed her. I asked about 3 times if it made a sound, but it fell on deaf ears (pun intended). Jaron dubbed her Socrates. 

After the train got in, we went to the KOA to put the tent up while it was still light out. We did that, set beds up, and got organized for laundry in about 30 min. Boom! Then we needed to find a restaurant because we hadn’t had a terribly satisfying meal all day and a backpacker meal wasn’t sounding appealing. Turns out most places were about to close at 9. Everything downtown that was open later was basically just a bar. Taco Boy was our best bet. So off we went. GPS didn’t have the exact address, and then we noodled around a sort of condo town square kind of thing and saw it, did a tight u-turn, and got rock star parking. (Bikes were still standing up when we got back to them.) They actually had a huge menu and 6 types of salsa. We got Lime Jarritos and it was a perfect meal. 

Thn back to KOA for showers, laundry, and socializing in the laundry room. We didn’t get to bed until 1am. 

This rock was too big for me to take home as a pet, but it was really cool. 

We tried to capture how close the train was to the cliffside. 

And how close the train was to a sheer dropoff. 

I thought this was really pretty with the red rock and green trees. 

We went over this river on a footbridge and chilled, looked for pet rocks, and Jaron skipped rocks and made one all the way across on a diagonal. 





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