Fall on the San Juan Skyway Loop is Incredible
This blog was created to document our four-month trip from Arizona through Canada to Alaska. And back. But periodically I get notices from Google warning that if I don't use it it will disappear. So I decided to use the site to share some photos of our Fall trip for 2014. Instead of doing it chronologically, I'm starting in the middle with a day trip Marsha and I took out of Cortez. The San Juan Skyway is a loop that took us to Delores and Telluride, then to Ridgeway, Ouray and Silverton before dropping down into Durango and back to Cortez. It took 10 hours, but about four hours of that involved stops in the towns along the way, and hundreds of roadside stops to take photos.
We started out up the Delores River only a dozen miles from Cortez. It became quickly apparent that the trip was going to involve fall colors.
This is Rico, a mining town that has evolved into a tourist stop. The season was almost over so much of it was closed. We would find the same thing as we progressed around the loop, but no matter. This trip was not about stores and shops. Rico was rich in fall color. For any photographers reading this I should point out that none of these pictures was shot with a polarizer filter. The sky was really that dark a blue.
That white dot in the sky at the upper left isn't dust on the lens, it was the moon. During my 25-year career at NASA I knew the folks who went there. That thought sometimes occurs me me when I see it unexpectedly, such as this.
This valley leads to a dead end. Its a box canyon that ends at the ski town of Telluride. Not much skiing going on yet, and the summer tourists had pretty much gone. We did this trip on a Monday and many of the shops were closed. Perfect.
Telluride was founded as a silver mining town in the 1880s. They apparently expected to find gold telluride produced in other parts of Colorado, but instead produced millions in silver. Butch Cassidy robbed the San Miguel Valley Bank here in 1889, before he hooked up with Sundance and the Wild Bunch. His maiden robbery netted nearly $25,000, a bunch of money in those days. But nothing compared to the billions Telluride produced since then in real estate
The San Miguel River runs north out of the same mountains that launched the Delores River in the opposite direction. It passes Telluride and ends up joining the Delores to amble into Utah We took a right at a junction and heading east towards Ridgeway.
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Ridgeway is a junction town. If you come to the Skyway loop from the north, from Delta or Grand Junction, you pick it up here. You can go either way, but we did it clockwise. The colors in Ridgeway reminded us that the final scene of the John Wayne version of True Grit was filmed here. The scene where the Duke puts the reins in his teeth and, with a gun in each hand, charges across a meadow at the five bad guys. "Fill your hand, Lucky Ned!" Ned wasn't so lucky, as it turned out. That meadow was ringed with flaming aspens. Just like now.
Only eleven miles and one burger later we arrived at Ouray, another mining town turned tourist mecca. It is pronounced "You-Ray," by the way. Since the last time we stopped there just 25 years ago it has apparently picked up up a reputation as a Jeep and ATV location. One shop keeper bragged Ouray had "more miles of trails than any town in the U.S." I suggested that Moab would be surprised to hear that.
If you get off the main drag you will find some interesting things on the backstreets of Ouray. This is the Western Hotel, which did look very western. I could just picture old Butch sitting up in his room here counting the loot from the bank job in Telluride.
This stub is all that remains of a railroad trestle that once bridged the gulch from one side of the mine to the other.
At the top of the grade the road gets better, but I have to say I don't think I'd want to drive the motorhome up out of Ouray this way. No matter how high the passes, the mountains just go on up higher. Note the altitude shown on the gps just to the right of the map.
At this point the road tops out. I think this is Electra Lake. There is a pullout at the viewpoint. Then the road heads south and downhill. Steeply downhill, headed towards the town of Silverton.
Silverton is somehow not as unique as the other towns on the loop. The engine of its economy is clearly the Durango-Silverton Railroad, a narrow gauge rail line that carries tourists on round-trip trips between these two towns once each day. Once the train departs in mid-afternoon, Silverton rolls up its dusty streets and goes back to sleep until the next morning when everyone comes back. Note the tracks that run up the street. So when the riders get off the train, the shops are right in front of them. Handy.
As you continue downhill toward Durango the views along the (much better) road still keep impressing. This was taken across from a ski resort called Purgatory. (Editor's note: At this point, the Google blogspot software has apparently decided to stop wrapping my text around the photos, so you get to do a bit more scrolling down to keep up).
This is the train in Durango. There seems to be a train here for everybody. The one on the right had just returned from a short trip up the line for the local historical society. The passengers all dressed in period costume and must have the enjoyed a great trip. The one on the left was returning from taking hundreds of children dressed in pumpkin costumes up the track five miles to meet with the Great Pumpkin and people dressed in Snoopy character costumes. Meanwhile, the real train was chugging back down the track from Silverton.
Durango itself was a nice town with civilized trappings. It even had a Walmart. It reminded us a lot of Rapid City, South Dakota. Upscale.
From Durango we headed west into a sunset, past Mesa Verde and down into Cortez where we had left the motorhome. This was a great day. But it plumb wore us out. In a good way. Mind you, this was just one day out of the three weeks we took to explore the San Rafael Swell, Goblin Valley, Capitol Reefs National Park in Utah; Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado and Chaco Canyon National Historic Park in New Mexico. I may post more about those sites here over the next week or so. Stay tuned.
Photos copyright 2014 by John and Marsha Taylor
