Road Trip: Silverton

Way back in the olden days of 2010, I took a road trip to Colorado with some friends from college. On that trip we made a quick visit to Silverton, and I thought it was the coolest little mountain town. It is surrounded on all sides by the towering San Juan Mountains, and it contains an impressive amount of historic old buildings. It's the kind of place that made me want to pack everything up and move there (without really taking into consideration things like jobs or real estate or Colorado winters).

So fourteen years later, I was excited to make another visit to Silverton. Things were a little different than my last visit. In 2010, we made our trip in April and it was still cold and snowing. Someone at the town's visitor center said the weather, which dumped several inches of fresh snow on us during the drive up there, was just a "typical Spring day in the Rockies."

This was the view of Silverton back then:



But on our recent visit, the weather was nice and pleasant (the temperature when we were there was 61 degrees). All the snow had melted, and the town was full of other tourists.



Silverton was founded in 1876 as a mining town (hence the silver in the town name). The mountains around Silverton were heavily mined for silver and gold all the way until the 1990s.



The town has a population of about 600 people now, and sits at an elevation of 9,302 feet. This is the Silverton City Hall, which was built in 1908:



Silverton is the county seat of San Juan County, which is the least populated county in Colorado with a population of about 700 people. Besides being the county seat, Silverton is actually the only incorporated town in the entire county. The reason for that is probably because the terrain is so mountainous. San Juan County actually holds the title for being the "highest county" in the US. And that's not a reference to the large number of dispensaries in Colorado - the average elevation in San Juan County is 11,240 feet.



This is St. Patrick's Catholic Church, which was built in 1905.



After the mines shut down, the town's economy turned to tourism instead. It's the end point of the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, a popular train that runs through the mountains and along the Animas River. While we were in Silverton, the train arrived and deposited hundreds of tourists in a wave that swept through the town's restaurants, ice cream parlors and souvenir shops.

We walked by the old train station, which was built in 1882 and is now a museum.



The station has an interesting collection of old rail cars sitting nearby.







For a comparison, this is what the area around the train station looked like way back in 2010:



And on the last visit in 2010, the snow around the station was still knee-deep. It was much easier to walk around the station this year. Hopefully it won't be another 14 years before I get to visit Silverton again.

Road Trip: Million Dollar Highway

We woke up in the morning and headed south from Montrose towards the incredibly beautiful San Juan Mountains. Our first stop was Ouray, which bills itself as the "Switzerland of America." It is a quaint little place, which was established as a mining town in the 1870s. They did some filming for the 1968 version of True Grit in Ouray, the town's courthouse was used as a stand-in for the courthouse in Fort Smith.



We stopped and did the short trail to Box Canyon Falls, which as the name suggests is a powerful waterfall hidden away inside a steep box canyon. The trail here runs along a metal catwalk that extends out over the creek. The creek was running high and muddy, and it was hard to get pictures of the actual waterfall. It was throwing off so much spray that the lens was immediately covered with water.



There are some slippery metal steps that lead down to the creek, just before it flows out from the canyon.



There is also a little nature trail here, which provided this view of a wooden sign promoting the canyon.



Just south of Ouray is an overlook with a great view of the very scenic but hard to spell Uncompahgre Gorge. The overlook was full of people taking pictures of the view, which included a thin but tall waterfall tumbling down the side of the mountain.



But wait, there's more! There's another waterfall here - Bear Creek Falls. It runs down the mountain, under a bridge and then falls for 70 feet into the gorge. I didn't hate that this waterfall was right on the side of the road and didn't require a five mile hike to see.



The road south from Ouray is called The Million Dollar Highway, and it's been named one of the most scenic drives in the country. And it's also been called one of the most dangerous. The Million Dollar Highway can be narrow, and have sharp hairpin curves as it snakes its way up and down the mountains. It runs alongside high cliffs, which sometimes don't have any guardrails to keep any wayward cars from plunging off into the abyss. But wow, it was breathtaking.



We made another stop at an overlook near the Red Mountain Pass (elevation 11,018). At the overlook there was a great view of the aptly-named Red Mountain.



At the mountain's base is the Red Mountain Mining District, a historic area that was once the site of several massive gold and silver mines. One of the mines here produced 400,000 tons of ore a day and was in operation all the way until the 1970s.



You can see several old mining buildings here, including this one for the Yankee Girl Mine that was built in the 1890s.



And there was also a small collection of houses. I bet it must have been hard to have been a miner here, but wow at least they had a good view!





It was nearing lunch time and I had a hungry family in the car, so we got back on the road. Next post will have some photos from the incredible little mountain town of Silverton...

Road Trip: Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

Dark and ominous skies loomed above us as we drove into Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. We were there late in the day and just barely made it to the Visitor Center to get our park passport stamped and to get a few souvenirs before it closed. Then we walked to an overlook, which provided our first view into the canyon.

The view was incredible. The overlook sits on the edge of the narrow and deep canyon, high above the Gunnison River.







The ominous clouds began to drop a few lightning bolts, and the winds began to pick up.



We started driving to another overlook when it started pouring rain. We waited in the safety of the car for a bit as the worst of the storm passed overhead. Luckily the lightning had stopped, so we felt safe enough to venture out. But heavy rain was still falling, which put the weatherproofing on the new camera to the test as we went to take a few pictures of the canyon filled with mist and fog.



The main road in the park visits several overlooks on the canyon rim. Eric and I tried to see all of them, while trying to not get too drenched by the rain.





The Black Canyon gets its name because the canyon walls are so narrow and steep, that they are often hidden in shadow.





The canyon here is one of the steepest, deepest and narrowest canyons in the Rockies. At one point (which is aptly named "The Narrows"), the canyon is only 40 feet wide.



The canyon was created a few million years ago when the Gunnison River began carving its way through the volcanic and metamorphic rock here. One of the most prominent parts of the canyon is the Painted Wall, which is 2,250 feet tall and the tallest cliff in Colorado.



For a comparison, the Painted Wall is taller than the Eiffel Tower (1,063 feet), the Empire State Building (1,250 feet), and the One World Trade Center (1,776 feet). If the tallest building in the world (the Burj Khalifa - 2,717 feet) was built along the Gunnison River, only about 500 feet of its spire would stretch past the top of the Painted Wall.



The rain finally stopped right at sunset, when just a little bit of light hit the clouds above the Painted Wall.

Road Trip: Keblar Pass

We headed out, driving towards another National Park. We went through the flat lands of the San Luis Valley, passing by random tourist things like an alligator farm and what was called a "UFO Watchtower" (I was tempted to stop, but we were in a hurry).

But I couldn't help myself and pulled over at this old abandoned house along the side of the road.



We had been driving for awhile, and you could still see the Great Sand Dunes off in the distance across the flat valley.



When we made our itinerary for this trip months ago, we planned a relatively short day of driving from the Sand Dunes over to the town of Montrose. But the Colorado Highway Department had other ideas. Our original route was closed due to construction on a bridge. So we had to detour around the mountains, which nearly doubled our driving time for the day.

Our detour took us over Keblar Pass, which was an incredibly scenic drive through the Gunnison National Forest. The road passed through massive groves of aspens and by towering mountains.



The pass sits at an elevation of 10,007 feet. We did not see any Keebler Elves along the road at Keblar Pass.





Finally we made it through the pass and started towards Montrose. We were staying at the Minecart Motor Lodge, a Route-66 style motel that had been recently rennovated. We laughed every time Siri gave us directions to it, since she would pronounce "Minecart" as "Minnie-curt." We eventually made it and checked in. But we didn't spend too much time there. We set down the bags and then drove right towards the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. Some photos of our stormy visit there on the next post....

Road Trip: Great Sand Dunes National Park - Part 2

We headed back to our camper after our visit to Zapata Falls. We would be leaving the next day, and I would miss having this view.



My cousin Eric is staying in Colorado, and he was kind enough to drive over and join us for our trip. And after dinner that night, Eric and I decided to head back out to the park so we could try hiking to the tallest dune before sunset. It was an optimistic plan, and we only made it about half-way there. Hiking on the dunes is a lot harder than you'd think.



Walking on sand dunes is a lot like walking on snow. Sometimes you can walk atop the sand just fine, others your foot will sink several inches and nearly disappear into the sand. If trying to go uphill, you will oftentimes start to slide right back down as soon as you plant your foot. It was exhausting, especially because the dunes are at an elevation of about 7,600 feet. For a comparison, the elevation in Little Rock where I am writing this right now is a measly 470 feet.



We hiked up as golden light hit the mountains above the dunes (which rise to an elevation of about 13,000 feet).



The dunes here began forming about 400,000 years ago.



Water from receding glaciers flooded the valley, creating streams and lakes. The water also brought down a lot of sand and sediment from the mountains, which was then blown by the predominant winds towards the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.







The dunes are huge, the largest in all of North America. For a sense of scale, you can see how small the people in the pictures are.







Before starting the hike, we drenched ourselves with bug spray in a feeble attempt to keep the mosquitoes at bay (which worked a little bit). Another hiker walked past us, who clearly didn't have any bug spray. He was surrounded by a cloud of mosquitoes, and he looked miserable. We tried to kindly offer him some of our spray, but he nervously declined (he may not have been an English speaker so he may have thought we were trying to spray him with some mystery chemical, who knows). I felt bad for him, but he did distract some of the mosquitoes that had been pestering us all evening.



At sunset we stopped hiking and sat down to enjoy the view. It was a great experience, even if we had to share it with a few mosquitoes.







We started the hike back to the parking lot, and luckily it is much easier to hike on sand going downhill. It was almost dark by the time we made it back to the car. I took off my hiking shoes and they were completely filled with sand. I turned them upside down and a comical amount of sand dumped out. And luckily we saw the other hiker who had refused our offer of bug spray, so thankfully he survived the hike and wasn't carried away by the mosquitoes.

The next morning we woke up and started packing up our stuff in the camper. Our time at the dunes was ending, and it was time to check out. It seemed like it was about to rain, and the clouds hung low over the mountains. I ran over to get a few more pictures of the dunes under that dramatic sky before we headed out.







I'm sorry there are so many sand dune pictures here. It's such a neat park that it was hard to stop taking pictures.





OK, one last picture. This was a panoramic shot of the dunes as they stretched out across the valley.