Sam And Saundra's Year Long Adventure - Part 92

Sam and Saundra’s Year Long Adventure – Part 92

Mid-West 

Sunday 4/26/09 – Silverton, Colorado

Today we celebrate the third day of Lori’s birthday.  Ray packs us up and off we go!  As we are traveling along the highway, talking about this and that, Sam and I are stunned again.  This time it was not only over the beauty of the area, but a huge herd of elk, off to the right, in a rancher’s field.  Ray took a side road and we were soon on the other side of that herd. Just happened that it was sharing the connecting fields with another huge herd of elk and a few stray horses.  Ok, the elk were the strays.  As we were checking them out - me with my camera and Sam with his binoculars- they wiggled their ears and tails at Sam, and posed and posed for me.  Such a big WOW!!  We kept seeing elk and deer, then deer and elk.  Once Lori was totally bored out of her gourd, we continued up the mountain road. 

One Of Two Groups

Fence? Ha!

“If you should, in your imagination, put together in one small group, perhaps 12 square miles, all the heights and depths, the rugged precipices and polished faces of rock, and all the sharp pinnacles and deeply indented crests, and twenty times the inaccessible summits that both of us have ever seen, you would not have a picture equal to this…” (W.H.Holmes 1876, on US geological and geographical survey party – describing the area of San Juan National Forest, Molas Pass and the way to Silverton.)

Lori and Ray

Ray stopped at a river crossing and pointed out that it was the place where they filmed Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid taking their plunge off of the cliff and into the Animas River below.  It was a very picturesque location, complete with cliff, river and tall, tall Douglas Firs.  Nice.  The further UP we went, the cooler and whiter it got.  It started snowing and we stopped for pictures at Twilight Peak.  At the restroom there, we chatted with a young couple from Canada that were bicycling up the mountain on a bicycle built for two.  They were cold, but having the time of their lives.

Silverton

 The sides of the road were cut out of stone and dripping with frozen and almost frozen icicles, sparkling in even the lowest of light.  Was Ray afraid? Not at all.  We sped on UP the road until we crested and caught sight of a small town way down there.  I took pictures.  We then drove there.  The town of Silverton was still mostly closed, waiting for more warmth to fully come out of hibernation.  We looked through some of the stores that were open and did a little shopping.  The town was postcard quality and we hope to come back again on the train that runs from Durango on narrow tracks that wind around and up the mountains to reach here.  We return to Durango and proceed to have the best Mexican dinner.  I would go back to Durango just for that, but Sam is determined to return to go hunting with Ray.  What a great third birthday day!

Waterfall