The Great Sand Dunes & Durango to Silverton

Dinner at Grumpy's Saloon in Silverton, Co.

We're at the entrance of the Great Sand Dunes National Park.

Ethan & I at the lowest elevation of the park. The back dunes look deceptively low.

Miles and Ethan almost at the highest peak.


Dinner at the Strater Hotel's restaurant.

Tuesday, July 12

Today we had breakfast at the lodge's restaurant. Ethan's eyes were bigger than his stomach. He ordered Raisin Bran and French toast, we helped him eat the toast.

When we reached the Great Sand Dunes National Park had no idea of the magnitude of it. It's over 30 miles of Sand Dunes with the highest peak being around 9200 feet. Our goal was to obtain the information from the park rangers and film, then venture out to the dunes, walk around some of the dunes then head out for Durango. Thinking that the whole ordeal would take somewhere between 1 to 2 hours at the most. Well that was very short sighted of us.

We had not idea that Ethan would be so enthralled with the dunes and the high desert. We started out low, 8400 feet. I hiked about half way up with the guys, then let them go on. Both Miles and I thought that they would go up about three quarters of the way up, the last quarter looked very steep and difficult. Once again we were happily mistaken. Ethan wanted to go all the way to the highest peak. It was more of a challenge for Miles than Ethan, but he managed, he's such a good sport.

By the time they reached the bottom where I was, Miles was as red as a fresh boiled crawfish. But they were both very proud of their accomplishment.

We had a late lunch then headed out for Durango, where we had dinner reservations at the Strater Hotel and the melodrama theater at 8:00. Well we barely made it to dinner on time, we didn't have time to check into our hotel first.

The melodrama was, "The Persuit of Happiness". Ethan had watched a couple of Bullwinkle cartoons on the way and fell in love with the Duddly Doright characters.

Well, this play had a villian that dressed just like Snidely Whipelash. Ethan loved it.

We had seats right at the stage where we could boo and hiss to our hearts content. They served popcorn and drinks during the production and our waiter was one of the London cops. He told us to yell out at any time, "I've been robbed," if we needed something. Ethan laughed so much I thought he was going to fall off of his chair. After the show he hugged us and thanked us for bringing him to the play. This was the best treat Miles and I could have every had.

We were so late getting home from the theater that we let Ethan go to bed without a bath. A most unusual occurrence for me to agree to. But we had an early start the nest day.

Wednesday, July 13

This was taken back in Durango. Ethan has on his new moccasins.

PaPere snapped a shot of us before we left the station.

We were on the Prospector's car where we had individual game chairs with a table and all of the snacks we could eat. Ethan has his engineer's hat on.

This view is from the train. I'm not sure who took it. Miles and Ethan both shot pictures non-stop.

Today we had to get up before 7:00 in order to get to the train station on time. This was our earliest morning for this trip. I wasn't sure if Ethan could handle it since we had a late night the day before because of the melodrama, but he was a real trooper and was ready for a new adventure.

We stopped at Micky D's for breakfast (it was right between the parking lot for the Durango-Silverton train depot and the depot). Then we ventured into the train station where we immediately had to buy a engineer's hat and bandana.

Both of the boys had a terrific time snapping pictures. This was the third year I let Ethan have a camera of his own and he is getting quite proficient with his framing. He gets a big kick out of seeing his photos on the computer. Our conductor would let us go on the landing at the back of our train so we could get a more open air feel. The scenery was breath taking and we saw lots of deers and prairie dogs. We also watched several white water rafters go by, plus our train stopped a couple of times to let hikers get off to start hiking up some of the mountains. At two different passes our train was only allowed to go 5 mph due to the steep inclines.

The ride to Silverton was 3 1/2 hours and by the last 30 minutes Ethan was lounging back in his chair sleeping.

Durango, where we started is only about 6700 feet up, but the train climbed slowly up to Silverton at an altitude of over 9500 feet.

The first thing we did when we reached Silverton was to stop in at the hotel and restaurant that we stayed with Rae & Christian when they were young. It hadn't changed a bit. The next stop was at an Indian trading post where Ethan found the perfect moccasins.

Tonight we had dinner back in Durango at an Italian restaurant, Momma's Boys. We all enjoyed it. Tomorrow we pack up and head out to Mesa Verde. Ethan's looking forward to more Indian ruins.