May 21, 2015...a day on the Durango-Silverton Train

What a fun day! Up early, stopped by a French Café for a pastry and coffee and headed for the train station. 

Then it was on to the train station!
We had an older lady as our narrator on the way to Silverton, she was very informative and the view up was beautiful, not as wonderful as the view on the way back, but so fun! We had great seats at the front of the car and enjoyed both of the narrators immensely. They were in period dress and played their part so well. The lady on the way back was a little younger and was very interesting as well…maybe a better storyteller but both did a great job sharing the history. 

It was fun as we would go into curves that we could see the engine from our window!

 We drove past the very old box cars from a train years ago.

 







 



 We ate at the Handlebars Café and had a delicious lunch. I had Chicken Pot Pie and Larry had an Elk burger with green chilies. Then we shared a delicious peach cobbler with ice cream.  We looked around town for a few minutes, bought a couple of treats…a coin purse with a cute little trailer for our laundry quarters and a new soap dish for the kitchen at home. Got back to Durango right around 6 and headed back to camp. Tired but a very nice day.  

Just hanging out with my honey!

Came across the prettiest waterfalls!

 What a fun day!!!

May 20, 2015...A day in Durango...so lovely!

What a wonderful nights sleep, it rained off and on all night and we LOVE sleeping in this little trailer and when you hear the rain on the roof...oh my...it just doesn't get much better than that! We have stayed so comfy...we love our little Holly! 
We enjoyed some breakfast and coffee, and then headed to Durango to hang out and get train tickets for tomorrow’s train ride. We are super excited about taking the train, we have heard from many what an interesting and beautiful trip it is, so we decided to treat ourselves to this tour. We then walked around downtown, shopped, ate at a Food Truck, called The Box, which was Cuban food and it was delicious! Really delicious! We decided to eat smaller things and maybe hit several places...especially since we really couldn't decide where to eat...toooo many choices!!!

 Then shopped and looked around more and then we went to Fired Up Pizza for a small pizza and bruschetta. We enjoyed the slower pace and did a lot of slow walking around. Then we drove around a bit more and headed back to the campground. 
We both enjoyed kicking back and reading, etc.
Then we fixed hot dogs for supper, just a really nice relaxing day!

May 19, 2015...Goodbye Utah....sniff-sniff...and hello Colorado, our dear friend!

Got up early as we really wanted to get on the road and get set up in Colorado as early in the day as we can. We did some work last night which may today easier, so we were on the road right at 8, stopped for gas, made phone calls to the kids, etc. so it was really about 8:45 before we were on the road. We quickly hit rain, then tiny hail, then sleet, then light snow about the time we were at the Utah/Colorado line. 

 This was the best sign picture I had because it was foggy and snowing!

We stayed in that until we got on Hwy 184 headed toward Cortez and finally blue skies and the sun broke out! Thankful for that, as pulling a trailer, in switchback roads is enough, we are so happy for dry roads! We were excited to get to Colorado but Utah has been so wonderful and the beauty so unexpected. We were looking forward to the mountains, trees and brooks that we know await us in Colorado, though the weather forecast said they were expecting a cold front so we wondered if we would get any fishing in! I was sure hoping so as I had not gotten to do any this trip.  

Fun to see those mountains with the snow on them...and know we are getting closer to our dear Colorado!

 We arrived in Durango around 12:30, got the trailer to its spot and since it was raining we just went straight inside and ate lunch and by the time we had eaten the rain had stopped for a bit, so we then got things hooked up, at least enough for the day.
Trees in the campground...oh yeah baby!

We actually set things up a bit more after this but this is the best picture I found.

 
Then we drove back into Durango, taking a scenic route that the ladies in the office told us about…beautiful! Went downtown for about an hour, just to get a feel for what we might want to do and then went to City Market for a few groceries and then back to the campground. 

 

These are some super cool sculptures made totally out of railroad spikes. 






This campground is nice, on the river and there aren’t many trailers here today but they warned us by the weekend it would be full, but since we leave Saturday morning we get to enjoy it while its quiet. The owners are super nice, the place is clean and there are so many things for kids to do plus lots of neat cabins. Overall, we were impressed. It rained off and on all evening, so we decided to just have soup in the camper and call it a day instead of the original plan which included cooking outside.  We both did a bit of reading, watched a few of our “shows” and totally vegged. But this has been a good day and we are so thankful to have safely arrived at our next location!!!

May 18, 2015. Moah, sightseeing around town and eating...another good day!

We had a great night rest and woke up and enjoyed some relaxing reading and coffee drinking time! So many mornings, we have “hit the ground running” so this morning was such a nice change of pace. Plus, I am pretty sure Larry and I neither could run anywhere if our life depended on it! We researched out places to eat in Moab last night and decided today, we since we are going to sightsee in Moab (now that most of the crowd of people have left!!) we would start by having breakfast at Jailhouse Café.

 Very good food!! 

Then we walked all around Moab, in lots of shops, though so many were t-shirt/souvenir type shops. We picked up a couple of little grandkid gifts from our trip but just enjoyed looking around Moab. We shopped around till around 1:30 and then had two quesadillas at the food truck…very good! 

This is the first of two food trucks we ate at on this trip, and both were amazing!
Urbanspoon recommend and it was very good and it did not disappoint! We then headed back to Casita. I did laundry, Larry put a few things away and cleaned out the Jeep as best he could before it started raining. Its been raining off and on for a few hours and it has been wonderful!!! We will head to Durango in the morning, so though we are very excited to see trees and Colorado, we neither can believe our Utah trip is almost over. What a surprise and a very good surprise this state has been! Though we have only seen the lower part of Utah, I can’t believe the amazing sights we have been able to enjoy. If we hope to see all the states (or most) in our Casita, I don’t know that we will get to come again…but we would for sure go back to Zion again! 

It has been our favorite though none has disappointed us!

May 17, 2015...Moab National Park...Day Two

This morning, we had made the decision to go to the park fairly early to beat the crowds. Yesterday, when we came back from the Canyonlands and passed the Arches entrance, we were amazed at the line of cars waiting to check in. We were hoping to beat the crowd that today and we did. Since we had already visited the Visitors Center, we were able to head right into the park and since we had already mapped out the hikes we hope to do today,  we went straight up to Landscape Arch Hike and a couple of other smaller hikes in the area, which meant we drove the entire distance of the park first and then started working our way down.  Landscape Arch Hike. 

Landscape is very long and so thin, they wonder how much longer it will hold. The span of the arch is longer than a football field and gets thinner each year. The hike took us to three different arches but Landscape was our favorite!

 The picture below shows how very thin the arch is getting! 

Plus, as you see at all the arches, the rocks below them are ones that have already fallen. Another reason its kind of risky to be right under one! :

Next stop was Delicate Arch, but when we arrived at the Trail head, we learned a hard rain during the night had closed the trail. TOO BAD! So we drove to double arch, the north and south windows and Turret Arch and got out and hiked all around. They were fun to see and crawl around the rocks looking at it from different points . We had such a good day, but I think we are both officially pooped! We have done all the hiking we can do! W have been so blessed to stay healthy and able to do these, but we both "threw in the towel" mid afternoon! We are worn out...this vacation thing is a lot of work! Ha.

We loved how many rocks look like the profile of a face!

 These two rocks below,  looked like elephants...trunk to trunk.

 Double Arch Hike

 As we were laying under this arch, we noticed the rather large CRACK, decided it was time to move on! :)

 Yes, itstime for me to start wearing a ball-cap! The wind did a number on my hair everyday!

 Whoops...didn't get this positioned quite right but I love how he tolerates all my picture ideas! He is a trooper!

 We drove back into Moab, ran by post office, then by Milts Stop –n- Eat and had a shake and some fries. We had read about it on several sites so thought it would be fun to just get a little "snack". We were amazed at how many people were there at 4:00 in the afternoon. Its fun to try these local places out, we love that aspect of traveling. Have kept to our #1 rule...never eat at a place you can eat at when you are at home!

We made a run by a Radio Shack to buy a flash drive as I am really feeling like I need to back up the pictures to another source. Larry read for a while then enjoyed a nice nap in his chair. I read too, then went up and took a shower and did my hair. Felt so good...I feel like a human again! Ha. Then back to the Casita to start dinner. We grilled chicken and veggies for fajitas plus all the fixings and enjoyed eating outside at our picnic table! It was a beautiful evening!!! We sat outside and read till the bugs chased us in. We made our plan for tomorrow and called it a day. But oh my, what a good day. We were so blessed with another day of wonderful sights, smells and reminded again of what a wonderful artist God truly is and how many beautiful sights He has given us to enjoy!