Adventure Day 39 – Colorado

We started out the day by heading to downtown Durango and were willing to pay for parking in order to go on the train ride. When we bought our tickets ($49 each), we found out that parking was free on Sundays at the meters. Now we were all set for our train ride from Durango to Cascade Canyon (the winter route). We were able to board the train at 9:30am and were on Car #3 seats 15-16. It took two hours to get there and there were lots of things to see out the windows. Whenever we passed by an intersection or houses, adults and children had stopped to wave to the train. Even along the road, cars stopped to take pictures of our steam engine pulled train. We even saw a huge field of prairie dogs like we see in the zoo, only these were in the wild. When we reached the views of the Animas River, they were outstanding! We were really high above the river and were able to see the rapids clearly. When we reached our destination, we stopped there for an hour and ate lunch. They sold concessions on the train so we had 2 hotdogs and a root beer for lunch. After lunch we hiked to a footbridge over the river. Before we knew it, it was time to return to the train. The rocking of the train on the way back made me sleepy though. Even though I had a hard time staying awake, I became alert when we passed about eight mule deer along the tracks. We arrived back at the station around 3pm and went to the museum, which was included in the price of the ticket. The museum was really worth seeing.

After the museum, we went to our car and decided to drop our stuff off so we could walk around town. That is when we found out we had car trouble. We called AAA and they sent a tow truck to help us. I was afraid we would need to be towed to a dealership (on a Sunday, no less!) but he was able to jump it off and start it. We dropped by Burger King for dinner and went straight to the Hampton Inn in case we had more car trouble. She started up fine at Burger King so I hope she starts up okay in the morning. I guess we’ll find out in the morning. Since the hotel had a laundry, I decided to do a load of clothes since they got dirty on the train ride.