May 26

May 26, 2012

Today the kids jumped out of bed and rushed to the KOA pavilion to get pancakes for breakfast. As we have traveled across this vast country, we have stayed at many KOAs and many of them, to our delight, have had pancake breakfasts on the weekends. It makes the kids day in a big way!! Durango is a pretty area of Colorado and we drove into the historic area to see the Durange and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railway Museum.


The museum was very nice.  It had a huge 800 sqr foot model train diorama with a working train.  The model train depicts the 1950s operations of the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad including trains passing a drive in theatre.   There are large scale trains to climb into and Christian was excited to sit in the cab of a locomotive and handle the levers and gauges as the engineer would have done.  There are many train exhibits to read and look at. The Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railway is the oldest continuaThere is a short movie ih the baggage car that was used in the 1969 movie, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid".  Another original car on display is the business car B-7, built in 1880, it is a beautiful replica of a 19th century rail car.  The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railwau is the longest continually running train in the world. This train has been in service for over 130 years. It ran between Durango and Silverton to carry supplies, people and ore back and forth from the silver and gold mines in the San Juan Mountains.  

We shopped at cowgirls trading post for silver jewelry, the lady gave us a great deals!!  And of course, there were Golden Retrievers on Main Street of Durango.....pretty ones, too.

As we were leaving, my eye caught on some great baskets at the Shared Blanket shop.  Turns out they are from Africa and only $10....best deal of the day....they look very southwestern and we really liked them. We REALLY have no more room for souvenirs in the RV!! 

Drove to Mesa Verde National Park...as we entered the park, we could see immense amounts of overcast smoke. The ranger told us that there are fires in New Mexico and Arizona and the high winds were blowing smoke into this area from there. We stopped in at the Chapin Mesa Museum to do the Jr. Ranger program and learn about the Anasazi native people at the exhibit area.....it was very interesting...the exhibit area was very nicely done and the movie was informative. There was a hallway of dioramas and 3 rooms of displays on houses, farming, pottery, weaving, hunting, and daily life of the Ancestral Puebloans (Anasazi). They built their dwellings beneath the overhanging cliffs in this area of Mesa Verde. The material they used was sandstone and mortar (mud and water). These ancient people were farmers with their main crops of corn, beans and squash being grown in the fields scattered across the mesa tops. We hiked 1/4mile down to the Spruce Tree House, the best preserved cliff dwelling. The trail was a very nicely maintained and paved path with a slight downhill grade. Along the way, we saw a small lizard that sat on the side of the path sunning himself. We came around the corner and caught our first glimpse of this ancient village. The ceilings are blackened and are a reminder of the bitter cold that these people endured in the 6 months of winter each year. A kiva is a Hopi word for a ceremonial room, comparable to our churches. The kiva was a gathering place sometimes used for weaving. They were built like a pit house, dug out of the sandstone down into the ground. There was a wood beam and mud roof. You could only enter by a wood ladder through a hole in the center of the roof. There is still a ladder there today and we were able to climb down into the kiva to see the inside. It was not very big, slightly dark and dusty.  Any claustrophobic folks may want to forego this.  The dwellings are pretty in their own right....amazing to know that they were built so many years ago and still standing today. 

Drove to 4 corners....drab landscape .......UGLY.....

Pulled in to 4 corners and it looked like a hole in the wall flea market..no joke..at the gate we discovered that they only take cash and we had forgotten to get cash in Durango...the kids had spent the last of mine at pancake breakfast and Pam was running low, too. We scrounged in our laundry money and came up with pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters to come up with a few dollars.....all we had was $18 so the lady agreed graciously to let us in......Wahoo!

We took pics on the square with a marker of the four corners of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah, the only place in the USA where 4 countries all meet together. Surrounding the square, are flags of the states. Facing the square on all 4 sides are small booths for the Native People to come and sell their homemade items.....so the first part of the drive today we enjoyed trees and pretty mountains......Southwest Colorado is diverse with mountains and trees and desert, also....lots of low grouwing scrub brush...

We passed a herd of wild free roaming horses...Mustangs, perhaps? They were pretty and one of the them was palomino...there was also a new baby in the herd.....

Finally made it to Moab after passing towns that made Radiator Springs look like a metropolis!!!! The Portal Valley RV resort looks nice so far, granted we are in the dark...hahaha