Day 12: A Train, A Train

This is the day we've all been waiting for; the icing on the cake, our steam train ride from Durango to Silverton.

We started out eating breakfast at McDonald's.  We parked at the lot next door, with McDonald's conveniently located in between the lot and the train depot.  Time for another side-bar...  We thought we were being so smart by getting a VRBO rather than staying at the Best Western right next to the train station, economically we seem to have broke even, but next time we'll just stay next door (details to follow).

The train ride (as expected) was awesome.  Our seats were on one of the enclosed coaches.  Sarah and I learned on our last trip to Silverton on the train (June 2014) that it can get very cold.  We all dressed warm and were thankful for the enclosed car, especially when it sleeted/snowed and rained in Silverton.  We ate lunch in Silverton at a small buffet, walked the town, then came back down the mountain.  Sadie sat with her daddy the entire trip and when asked, later on, daddy said that was his favorite part.  We saw some elk on the way down the mountain and the conductor said it was rare to see them this late in the year. 

A couple of interesting notes about the train ride.  The trip goes alongside the Animas River.  The conductor said the river was as high as they had seen it in many years.  The high river was attributed to the large snowfall this past winter.  We saw a significant amount of snow near the tracks.  Secondly, after some investigation, we found out that each train now has a service team following it with fire fighting equipment.  This is due to a fire caused by the railroad last year. 

Anyway, back in Durango we decided on pizza at Home Slice pizza.  That place is a disaster, (another rant coming, be prepared).  You can look up my review on Trip Advisor, it was not good.  Sarah and I ended up going to the local Kroger, picking up stuff to make chicken Alfredo and cooking it at the house.  Mom, dad, and Jenn got their pizza and ate at the restaurant, we weren't so lucky.  I think I'll leave the rant about the state of Colorado to tomorrow's post. 

On to Denver tomorrow, it will be our last driving day.