Road Trip: San Juan Skyway

The San Juan Skyway is a scenic route that connects the towns of Durango, Telluride, Ouray, and Silverton. So one day, Eric and I decided to head off and see what it had to offer. We left Durango and were soon deep in the majestic San Juans. We stopped at Lizard Head Pass (elevation 10,222) to see the view:









Just up the road is Trout Lake, so we dutifully pulled over and got a few shots.





We stopped again a few minutes later at the Matterhorn Mill, which was built in 1920.



The mill is larger that you realize and actually angles down the side of the mountain to the creek below.



The mill was used until the 1960s. It's been listed on the National Register of Historic Places and there are plans to preserve the structure.



Near the town of Ophir we stopped for a few pictures of this old building:





The scenery here was just amazing, and it was hard to not constantly stop for pictures. This was from a random pull-off on the side of the road.







We took a slight detour from the Skyway and went onto a bumpy dirt road to a little ghost town. Some photos from there on the next post....

Road Trip: Durango

From Silverton, we headed south through the San Juan Mountains towards Durango. It's an amazingly scenic drive.



The road to Durango goes (Durangoes?) over two mountain passes. We stopped at Molas Pass, which sits at an elevation of 10,970 feet. The view from the pass was spectacular.









We spent a few days in Durango, and it is a neat mountain town. It has a compact and busy downtown that was filled with lots of bars, restaurants and touristy shops. One of the most famous older buildings in Durango is the Strater Hotel, which was built in 1887.



We weren't fancy enough to stay in the Strater Hotel. We ended up staying in a place just a few minutes from downtown, but just far enough away for us to see some wildlife, including this deer. These photos were actually taken while looking out the window.

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.