Diddling around Lansing

I had been in a real hurry to get back to Lansing and start packing for my new life in Tempe – it wasn’t simply getting away from the Arizona summer. However, once we got here, my desire to leap into action is stymied by the realization that we aren’t going to be heading back to Arizona until the end of August. And that I can’t make final decisions until we are actually packing the car. At that point I (really Ken) will put the core stuff in and then see what nooks and crannies remain that I can cram with other stuff. Note – this isn’t total surprise, but it’s amazing what a presumably logical mind can ignore until its nose is rubbed in it.

The move is made both easier and harder by the fact that I’m not selling my house right away. My sister has agreed to continue living here and be the caretaker. That way I can delay selling until (hopefully) the Lansing housing market improves. Plus Ken’s house is (mostly) fully furnished so my furniture isn’t needed (and Alice can use it anyway). So – no U-Haul is necessary. That brings it down to the intersection of what I feel I will want/need in the next year and what will fit in the car. Micro decisions. Lots of ‘em. And most can’t be made until the last minute. At least living in a small Class C RV for several years makes it easy to see what things are really important to me.

Denver, Lincoln, & finally Lansing

We had arbitrarily decided to route ourselves through Denver on our way to Lansing simply because Ken hadn’t been there before. I hadn’t either, but that fact didn’t weigh on me.

While researching things that were at least somewhat unique to Denver, I had settled on the Denver Mint and the Molly Brown House. Unfortunately, the Denver Mint 1) required reservations and were booked to mid-July and 2) wasn’t open on the weekends. So that just left the Molly Brown House. But that was OK since Ken picked the Colorado Railroad Museum. That gave us two short-ish things to do before hitting the road for the putting-the-miles-behind-us push to Lansing.

Since the Molly Brown House didn’t open until noon on Sundays, we went the to Railroad Museum first. I’ll confess, I’m not terrifically interested in large motorized objects nor in model trains, but, if you are, this is a great place to go. I only wish they had better signage. Lots of info on the web site, however.

		Colorado Train Museum VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

After wandering around for a while, we decided we’d had enough and went on to the Molly Brown House. The first tour started at noon and we wanted to get there for it. Margaret “Molly” Brown was a Titanic survivor and the musical “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” is loosely based on her life. The house was nice but the real prize was the docent we had. She was obviously a born story teller and it was a real pleasure to listen to her. Photos weren’t allowed inside the house but here is a composite showing the front.

After the tour, we were going to have lunch and hit the road. We had reservations at the EconoLodge in Lincoln NE that night and it was nearly 500 miles away. After a brief consultation we decided to just hit the road and grab a bite at some fast food place east of Denver. So we did, getting there about 10:30 local time that night. The following day was 733 miles to my house in Lansing MI.

And thus ended our journey east.

Denver Micro-brew Tour

We arrived in Denver about 6:15 Friday evening. While it was a lovely drive, it was still about 10 hours since we left that morning – about eight of which were spent in the car. The motel, an extended stay place, was at the bottom limit of acceptability but it did have internet and was clean. I’d like to avoid extended stay places in the future, however.

Saturday, we were scheduled for the Denver Micro-Brew tour. Ken is a beer connoisseur and I thought I might enjoy trying different varieties. For the most part I don’t care for beer – I’d rather use the calories in eating something. But I learned to sip Guinness in Boston and Ken’s “house beer”, Newcastle Nut Brown Ale, isn’t bad either. I prefer something not too bitter and with a bold flavor – if I can’t taste what I’m drinking I’d rather have water.

The tour was scheduled from 12:00 – 2:15 pm in downtown Denver and involved walking about 2 miles from start to finish. It sounded OK when we planned it: Denver is the mile high city, high temps should be in the low 80’s, we’d be inside much of the time, etc. Well, the first and last were true, but the heat was following us and Denver hit a record 106° that day! Needless to say, the walking around wasn’t fun. But it did make us really enjoy being inside the brew houses and drinking our samples. Luckily, pitchers of water were available, too.

We started at the Rock Bottom Restaurant and Brewery and had samples of the Black IPA (ick) and the Summer Blonde Honey Ale (OK), then on to the Wynkoop Brewing Company and their B3K Schwarzbier (not bad) and Patty’s Chili Beer (ick). Third was the Falling Rock Tap House (not a brewery) where we had Great Divide Double IPA (ick), Odell 90 Shilling Brown Ale (not bad), and Avery White Rascal (OK). Falling Rock’s claim to fame is “…a constantly changing selection of 75+ beers on tap and 130+ different bottled beers in the cooler”. Our last stop was Breckenridge Brewery where we had their Vanilla Porter (not bad) and the 2220 Red Ale (OK).

This was the end of the tour. By this time, I was a bit buzzed. The samples were only about a half cup (2nds were available) and I didn’t even finish all of mine, but we hadn’t gotten downtown in time to have lunch before the tour. And I’m a cheap drunk to boot. We decided to head back to Rock Bottom for a late lunch (early dinner) because that's where our car was parked – a very hot 1 mile walk in the sun. We did have a very good meal, but I made the mistake of getting the free pint of beer the tour entitled us to. Some kind of porter (forgot the name) but I couldn’t finish it so it was wasted anyway. Finally, back to the room where I lay down while Ken got on the internet.

Conclusion: I still would rather have a glass of water to quench my thirst. But the porters and brown ale weren’t bad if I ever felt the need for a beer.

On to Denver

over the Million Dollar Highway.

Today was an easy day. A day that reminded me why I like road trips: a good companion, a comfortable car, and gorgeous scenery. This portion of the trip was planned by pulling out a paper map and following the green dotted lines (scenic route) up to I-70 then taking that east to Denver. Even I-70 was gorgeous and you can’t say that about an expressway very often. There were only ~60 miles in the center that were blah – and we stopped for lunch there. That’s one of the nice things about paper maps – you can easily pick out the scenic routes. I haven’t figured out how to do that with Google Maps or the Garmin yet.

The whole trip was a lot of ups and downs – 23,666’ up and 25,563’ down to be exact. Here’s the elevation from the Garmin track log:


The five peaks are: Coal Bank Pass (10640’), Molas Pass (10970’), Red Mountain Pass (11018’), McClure Pass (8755’), Vail Pass (10603’), and the entrance to the Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70 (11161’). As I said, up and down. Not so easy to show the “I’m leaning toward the center of the car” moments, however.

Back to the Million Dollar Highway. This refers to the section of US-550 between Silverton and Ouray. Wickipedia says the origin of the name is disputed but it certainly must have cost a mint to build it in the 1920’s. Twisty, turny, up and down, narrow lanes, few guard rails – in other words, fun to drive but expensive to build. Look up the history yourself: US-550. And absolutely gorgeous.

I don’t have many pictures because I find scenery hard to get good photos of, but here’s a few.

Ken and his comfortable Charger

Silverton CO

Red Mountain Mining District

Yankee Girl Mine headshaft

Red Mountain townsite?

View from pull-out south of Ouray

Durango-Silverton Railroad

The primary reason we came to Durango was to ride the scenic Durango to Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. From their magazine: “… the D&SNGRR was voted One of the World's Top Ten Most Exciting Train Rides by the Society of American Travel Writers in 2008 and the Number One North American Train Trip by National Geographic Traveler in 2010!”

Ken tried to talk me into a combination train ride up and raft trip down (the Animas) but I was concerned about the water temperatures. (I’m a wimp about cold water.) As it turns out, the heat followed us out of Phoenix and some cold water would have felt good. In any event, I opted for the train up and back. They were offering a new service with narration by costumed historical characters – a different character up and back. I’m a sucker for stories so that’s what we did.

Since we didn’t care for the free hotel breakfast, we arrived early at the station and had breakfast at the nearby Mickey D’s with a side of internet. There was still plenty of time when we were done so we wandered about a bit and got us a nice position to photograph the earlier train as it left the station.

After the train was gone, we headed back to prepare ourselves for our departure. Easily led astray, Ken got sidetracked by a couple of ladies from the Durango Melodrama who were touting their play for that evening. (At that point I was interested, but when we got back that evening, I was exhausted. So, no play.) After that tête-à-tête, we boarded our coach and were given the safety and orientation lecture by the conductor.

As I mentioned above, we had chosen to take the narrated trip. Our guide on the way up to Silverton was Chipeta, the wife of Ouray, a chief of the Utes at the time the railroad was built. She was a very engaging person but unfortunately suffered from lack of knowledge about the railroad’s history and awareness of where we were on the route. (Fairly new to the area and only second time riding the train. Plus we were first audience.) Once she gets past these humps, however, I think she will be a very good narrator.

Our narrator on the trip back to Durango was General William Jackson Palmer, a co-founder of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad – which became the Denver & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad in 1981. He was another very engaging person – I guess you have to be if you want this job – and he knew the region’s and railroad’s histories very well. He was also able to answer questions about things we saw along the way. I was rather sorry we hadn’t gotten him in the morning when we were fresher and more eager to find things out. But he had the advantage over Chipeta in that he had played this part before (I don’t remember for what) and was a long time resident. Chipeta will eventually get there.

When we got into Silverton, we went to the Bent Elbow for lunch (an open faced grilled vegetable sandwich for me – very good. I forgot what Ken got but he wasn’t as impressed.) Then we wandered around exploring Silverton until it was time to take the train back to Durango. The first four pictures are on Blair St outside the Bent Elbow looking in the four directions, the rest are around Silverton.

Except for the better narration, the train ride back wasn’t nearly as much fun. The views were still excellent, we were just tired. We went directly back to our hotel, downloaded the cameras to our computers and then argued mildly about supper. It was later than I really like to eat by then and I didn’t want a big meal. We settled on going to the Old Tymers Café where I had a bowl of green chili and pork soup. Very good.

Here are some views from the rides up and back. The Animas river was a constant companion – the one I declined rafting down. My mistake. In the third photo, the water tank is being refilled. Back country hikers are either being picked up or dropped off at Needleton in the fifth photo. And Ken got a good rainbow shot when the train vented some steam.

Off to Durango and Mesa Verde

After an uninspired breakfast, we left Thunderbird Lodge the next morning and toured the North Rim of Canyon de Chelly. The overlooks here are for Antelope House, Mummy Cave, and Massacre Cave (photos in yesterday’s post). Although there are only three overlooks on the North Rim vs Seven on the South, I think it gives better views – especially if you are not taking a canyon tour.

We finished the North Rim tour in about an hour and headed off to the Four Corners Monument at the intersection of AZ, CO, UT, and NM. This is the only spot in the United States where four states touch each other. I know, I know - “Big Whoop.” But we’re having fun doing little things that bring smiles to our faces.

It was on the North Rim drive I found out that my camera had taken a beating from all the dust on the jeep tour – my zoom control just was *not* working smoothly. It either wouldn’t zoom or it wouldn’t stop zooming. Annoying. [After working it a lot and air blowing it here in Lansing, it seems fine now.]

The rest of the day was a pleasant but non-descript drive to Durango. We pulled into the Durango Super 8 expecting to do some blogging (good intentions anyway) only to find out that the internet was down and would be for the foreseeable future. They were changing providers and didn’t know when the new one would be in place. Arrrgh! McDonalds saw a lot of us here when we wanted to connect.

On Wednesday we drove over to Mesa Verde. Ken had never been there but I had spent several days at Mesa Verde in May 2009. I had taken the guided tours for Cliff Palace and Balcony House but hadn’t gone over to Wetherill Mesa and taken the tour for Long House. Ken didn’t express any interest in a particular ruin so that’s what we did this time: Long House tour - at noon.

I misunderstood the ticket seller on when we needed to arrive for the tour so we arrived with some time to spare. Not enough to do anything substantial (natch) but plenty to walk over to the overlook for Step House and photograph the ruins and then set around and wait for the tram to take us to Long House.

Finally, we all loaded up and (almost) headed out. At the last moment, I decided I wanted to take a picture. And they graciously stopped and let me. Ken (end of second full row) graciously acknowledged my existence. While waiting, we had talked to a ranger about the various fires they had had in Mesa Verde. About 75% of it has been burned since the park was founded in 1906. Wetherill Mesa had a big burn in 2000 and the results are still very evident – great open grazing for browsers but no big trees.

It was only about a 5 min ride to the ruins and then we started the long walk down – thinking all the time about the walk back up. It was hot and would only get hotter. We made one stop on the way down where the Ranger talked about how the mesa top communities lived.

Long House ruin is the second largest ruin at Mesa Verde and is a more relaxed experience than Cliff Palace (or Balcony House) since fewer people make the drive out to Wetherill Mesa. The first photo is from the overlook we stopped at after the tour. The others are the view just before the last flight of steps leading into the ruin and looking right and left from within the ruin.

Once inside the ruin, the ranger led us up the ladders into the rooms and showed us the seep at the back wall (where they got their water) and an area that was probably used for grinding corn. Thought to be that because of the small containment wall around it. At the end we thanked the ranger. All in all, a very interesting tour. And the walk back up wasn’t as bad as I feared. But it *was* hot and we should have brought along a second bottle of water.

At the top, we had the option of taking a tram directly back to the parking lot or continuing around the loop. We chose to continue around the loop and stopped at the Long House and Kodak House overlooks. The Kodak House is so named not because it is particularly colorful (my first thought) but because Nordenskiold (first scientific explorer) stored his camera supplies there. Although I can’t help but think there should have been easier places to store it.

Finally, back to the parking lot where we rehydrated our bodies for the trip back to Durango. And a quick stop at Walmart to pick up some more bottled water.