This had been a bucket list for some time and I finally got the chance to do it, and it seemed I lucked out in getting to do it at a very nice time of year, with the aspens turning from green to gold.

I left my motel in Blanding early as I had to be in Durango by 9am and it was 125 miles away. I picked up something the day before, to eat for breakfast at the motel, before hitting the road.

It was a nice day for a drive and there was not much in the way of traffic so early in the morning. I got to Durango a little before 830 and had plenty of time to walk around town a little and also explore the area around the depot, including the museum.

The train started boarding at 915am but I did not bother getting on until around 945am. My reservation was for a gondala car, which I had expected to be in the middle of the train somewhere, but as luck would have it, turned out to be the very last car on the train. I was pleased with this as it would give me a better opportunity for capturing photos of the front of the train as it was going around curves. My seat was on the left side of the train and I would have preferred the right side but it was easy enough to move from side to side when the train was moving.

Our locomotive was #493 which was a K-37 class 2-8-2 "Mikado" type narrow gauge steam locomotive that used to be a C-41 class 2-8-0 "Consolidation" type standard gauge steam locomotive built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia, PA in 1902 for the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad (D&RG). First it was a D&RG class 190, then it was a D&RGW (Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad) class C-41. It was later rebuilt in 1928 into a D&RGW class K-37. In 2018 it was converted from coal-powered to oil-powered.

We left Durango promptly at 945am and started steaming from downtown into the suburbs north of Durango. This went on for about 3.5 miles or so until we were pretty much out of Durango entirely. The trip to Silverton is 45 miles, and at a top speed of 18 miles per hour, would take about 3.5 hours. The rail bed would climb about 2,800 feet along the route.

After leaving Durango we followed the meandering Animas River to the north. We would follow this river all the way to Silverton. After about 17 miles we began to enter Animas River Gorge which was by far the most interesting portion of the trip for me. It must have taken an amazing amount of work to construct a railroad through the gorge and at times the rail bed is hundreds of feet above the river, on a very narrow ledge that has been blasted out of the side of the cliff. On the other side of the gorge the train comes back down to river level and follows the river through Cascade Canyon, past the Needleton Flagstop and then eventually into Silverton. The section through Cascade Canyon was where we started seeing a lot of the golden aspen groves, mixed in among the conifers. It was a beautiful sight. The color of the river changes quite a but during the ride as well. As we got further north the color became more of a turquoise because it was much more narrow and carrying a lot of silt.

We arrived in Silverton a little after 1pm and I had a little time to explore the town and grab some lunch. I was not taking the train back to Durango and opted for the quicker return by bus. Once back in Durango I still had to drive all the way back to the south rim of the Grand Canyon, which was 290 miles away. I found a brewery, the Avalanche Brewing Company, where I had a pint of beer and a quesadilla for lunch. Both were quite good.

After lunch I headed back to the train depot and boarded the bus for the 1.5 hour ride back to Durango. The ride back by bus was very scenic as well and my only complaint was that the bus driver did not stop talked for the entire 1 hour and 30 minutes. He just went one and on from one story into the next. It would have been nice to have a little quiet time to just relax and enjoy the scenery.

We arrived back in Silverton at 445pm and I made a quick stop at a gift shop to pick up a "Colorado" teddy bear for my wife. She is collecting them by state and this one had "Colorado" embroidered on one of it's feet. I had seen one in the window when I was walking around town early that morning but nothing was open yet.

I started the drive back to Arizona around 5pm and only made a couple of quick stops along the way, to get some snacks for the ride and also for bio-breaks. I arrived at Desert View around 10pm and converted the back of the car into sleeping quarters for the night. I had an air mattress and sleeping bag with me that fit perfectly into the hatchback when the rear seats were folded down. Sleeping at Desert View was good since I had access to the bathrooms there during the night and early in the morning.