Wendesday - January 14, 1998: Durango, CO
Cinders and Smoke...
We awoke bright and early this morning, and dug our freezing cold silk longjohns out of the frozen Honda Accord. Thought they'd come in useful on this bright and clear but chilly-to-the-bone morning in downtown, Durango.

We had a train to catch! The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, pulls out only once a day in winter - at 10am sharp! The D&SNGR is a real live old-fashioned coal burning steam engine that has been chugging the jagged mountain route from Durango to Silverton since 1882. It looks just like those old steam locomotives in the movies, which is no surprise, because it is the actual train and track used in many a Hollywood oater, from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to How the West Was Won.

We made quite an entrance onto Car No. 2, with coffee go-cups and bagels, jackets and cameras flying, since we were a few minutes late and everyone (including the Conductor who is also Mayor of Bayfield, CO!) was waiting on us. Late again, --- to nobody's surprise.

Then the train pulled out of it's original station in this little historic downtown and began its ascent through the canyon cut by the Animas River up towards the Victorian mining town of Silverton. Up and up through the gorge ("I think I can, I think I can…"), clinging

to the bare rock and staring 750 feet straight down to the rushing river below in some places. We climbed with brilliant sunshine, blue skies, and pristine snowy panoramas everywhere we looked; several elk herds calmly stared as we chugged by. They've seen the 10am blow by before, even if we hadn't seen them before.

The D&SNGR runs a shortened schedule in winter, so we only went halfway to Silverton, stopping in a snow-covered meadow called Cascade Canyon for an hour to walk around, enjoy the crisp sunshine and take advantage of a few key Train Photo-Ops. Then the train was cleverly turned around and we descended back again towards Durango for a few more hours, arriving back "home" around 3pm from our exhilirating mountain adventure. Views from the open car were brilliant and the mountain air did us no harm.

Upon returning back, we took in some extensive window-shopping, they have some of the best Southwestern stuff here! It is by mutual agreement that both of our mothers would find this town and it's stores endlessly cute --- and so do we!

As dusk set in, we posed for one of those cheesy old-fashioned Western portraits, dressing up as two gun-slingers. We tried to look authentic, but Desi really wanted to be an outlaw --- long blonde hair and all --- instead of the more predictable schoolmarm or prostitute. These pictures may or may not be available for public viewing at a later date.

Then it was on to dinner at the nearby Skinny Grill, terribly named, because we did not come out of there any skinnier by any stretch of the imagination. We loves Durango!