Mesa Verde

After spending the night in Durango, we headed out to Mesa Verde.

I had been there in 1999 with Steve and Rita, but I guess I didn't remember it very well. I had also been there around 1975 on a family vacation.

You drive in and immediately start climbing, and before you know it, you're 1500 feet above the surrounding plane. It's sort of like being on a huge flat mountain.

We wanted to tour the cliff houses, but the wait was over 4 hours to get on one of the guided tours.

The temperature was oppressive. We had just spent almost a week in the mountains with brisk nights and pleasant days, and this brutal sun and arid desert-like atmosphere seemed to suck the moisture right out of you. There were areas that had been burned back in 2000 and they were still pretty barren and desolate looking.

When you got up to the edge of the mesa, it really dropped off quickly. You felt like you were staring off the edge of a wall. It really made you wonder what the people were thinking of, to put homes in the side of the canyon wall like that.

It's hard to believe that so many of these amazing dwellings were built almost 1000 years ago, lived in for less than 100 years, and then abandoned.

American Basin

I remember American Basin from 2000 when Steve and I climbed Handies Peak, our first 14er together. I remember it being unbelievably beautiful, full of flowers, and I remember regretting that the road had been blocked off. It used to go up the basin about another mile, and we had to walk that distance. I remember finishing our climb and getting back to the Jeep and having a massive headache hit me just as I sat down.

This time around, it was harrowing just getting a little way into the basin, but we pulled over and got out to take pictures and it was beautiful. I think the time we went before was a little later in the summer, because this time it was mostly yellow flowers, and I remember a lot of purple when we were there before.

Zach loved the flower meadow, mostly because it had a little stream in the middle and he could throw rocks into it.

There was a serious photographer there, with a big box camera and a heavy tripod. He dropped a fancy graded filter, which I found after he left, but he was long gone before we could return it.

I remember seeing the American Basin on a calendar a few years after we visited last time. It is one of the prettiest alpine meadows you will ever visit.

We originally planned to go from Animas Forks to American Basin and then back again, but the road was so horrible that we figured it would be easier to go down rather than trying to go back up and over. So we traded a terrifying hour long drive for a 6 hour drive. The return trip went from American Basin through Lake City and Creede, then over Wolf Creek Pass to Durango.

Cinnamon Pass

There are some places that you go that may be beautiful, and may take a long time to get there, and you may have really looked forward to going, but in the end, it's just a big hassle.

For me, Cinnamon Pass was such a place. We left Animas Forks, and the first half mile up to the pass was so trecherous that it hardly seemed worth it. The road was not bad after that, but the pass itself was not a cheery place. I can't remember whether I had a headache or Zach was being irritable, but I remember feeling anything but euphoric at the pass. Zach insisted on going out to see the snow, which was across a trecherous scree field. I took him anyway, as I am a sucker for baby adventures.

There were some close peaks on the shoulders of the pass, and we briefly considered climbing up one, but we did not want to take the time and we were not feeling up to it.

Animas Forks

The ghost town of Animas Forks is actually quite beautiful. It's in an alpine meadow amid a sea of yellow flowers. The site is beautiful on a bright sunny day, and it's not hard to imagine that this would have been a pleasant place to live in good weather.

I had visited the site almost 10 years earlier, and the only clear memory I had was the house with the bay window. There is a whole story about a man named Thomas Walsh, who founded the Camp Bird Gold Mine and got very rich, eventually giving the Hope Diamond to his daughter as a wedding present. The story about Thomas Walsh and the Animas Forks house with the bay window is that his wife told him she would never move somewhere if she could not have a house with a bay window. Supposedly, Thomas made the house for her, but there are conflicting stories. Other stories say he never lived there, that the house was the mine superintendent's house.

In any case, it's very pretty, and improbable, the way it hangs over an incline with it's front half propped up with log cribs.

Zach loved the place and only wanted to walk around in circles on the wood floors. Some of the houses had new tin roofs on them, which I'm sure is an attempt to keep the place up for tourism's sake.

I noticed that some rooms had what looked like modern wallboard up inside of them, but others had wood slats that had been covered with cloth at one time. You can just imagine people trying anything they could to keep the cold air from whistling through the walls.

What's left near Eureka

We saw that not much was much was left around Eureka, it barely qualifies as a ghost town, since there aren't many structures.

There was some kind of lodge, and they used one of the old time wagons as an sign, which was rustic and picturesque. Then we saw the remnants of a suspension bridge, which has probably not had any traffic over it for many years.

There was also a sediment check dam of huge timbers that was still intact, but just barely so. You can tell that this little dam did one hell of a job in it's day, as it is completely filled in with rock upstream of the dam. That looks like a lot more weight than the little dam should have been able to hold back.

Eureka

There is a wide spot in the road called Eureka, a ghost town on Colorado Road 2 between Silverton and Animas Forks.

The main thing you see here is the remnants of the Sunnyside Mill, huge concrete pilings and the outline of the mill's foundation are all that remain.

There was something compelling about the site, though. Nothing much is there now, but it's still wide open like there used to be something big there at one time.

Zach sure loved running around on the roads and foundations.

Alpine Loop

The off-road route called the Alpine Loop forms a big H (or 8) shaped road between Lake City, Ouray, and Silverton. There are two passes at the top called Engineer Pass and Cinnamon Pass and a big ghost town called Animas Forks. It's a cool area that I have been through before, years ago.

We decided to go from Ouray up the Loop to Animas Forks, skirting the Engineer Pass. However, the first clue that this might not be a good idea was the cluster of trucks with trailers offloading ATVs and Polaris dune buggy looking small off-road vehicles. As we turned in, there was a sign that said that only high clearance short wheel base 4WD vehicles were recommended.

It only took us about 400 yards of road to figure out that this did not mean a rental Ford Explorer. We bailed on this particular adventure.

Rail Trucks

One of the cooler stories I heard in the mountains was what happened to the area after the mines started shutting down and the boom times ended.

The economy collapsed and the railroad that served Telluride went out of business. I think this was in the 1930's I can't remember whether it started earlier. During the lean times, it was difficult to move goods and people into the area throughout the year. Some people took old cars and converted them to rail ready transports. Goods and people were moved by these machines for many years.

On the way out of the area, going through Ridgway, we saw one of the old rail trucks on the intersection, being used as an advertisement for a museum. They say that people used to pay to ride in the back of them. Can you imagine how cold that was in the winter? Seems like a good use for the old rails, though.

The Shortest Distance

The straight line between the Ridgway Rehab Center and the bar that shares the building does not stretch very far.

We kept wondering if the road crews were the ones mispelling the road signs, but I think it's just the way things roll in Ridgway.