Colorado/Utah Trip Days 8-9: Durango and Silverton, Colorado

*This post is part of my Travel series going back to recap some of our past (pre-blog) trips. Today I’m covering our time in Durango and Silverton, Colorado, in August 2019. The boys were 9 and just-turned-11, here. See other days from this trip here: Days 1-3 (Vail/Glenwood Springs), Days 4-6 (Moab, Utah), and Day 7 (Mesa Verde National Park).*

Thursday, August 15, 2019: Durango, Colorado

We had just 2 nights in Durango, so Thursday was our only FULL day there. Basically the entire day was to be dedicated to the area’s largest attraction, the historic Durango-Silverton Railroad.

Silverton is a tiny mountain town about 1.5 hours from Durango (by car). There is an old steam train though (in operation since the 1800s!), that connects the two towns through the mountains. As you might expect, the winding train ride takes quite a bit longer- around 3.5 hours.

I remember that we had researched this a lot and debated the best way, and if we should even do the train ride, given the time commitment. The train ride is also rather pricey. Ultimately, we decided that we would do the one-way train ride (which I think is probably the most popular option they offer- ~7 hours round trip would be a LOT of time on a steam train, even for train enthusiasts. lol.)

The option we chose included a shuttle van ride to Silverton, time to explore Silverton on our own and have lunch, and then the long train ride back to Durango.

There were various schedule times- we opted for the mid-morning departure (maybe 10 am, I think?).

Pics from the pretty drive to Silverton.

I believe they did some narration for part of it, telling us about the history of the area and these mountains and the towns.

Silverton!

I feel like my old iPhone pics from this day don’t really do Silverton justice. You kind of also had to be there, to smell the fresh mountain air, feel the sun, see the crisp blue sky…. It’s such an adorable, quaint little town that really transports you back in time.

When we got out of the van, the boys posed by the train, which was either coming or going with another bunch of people.

This is a great classic train shot! 🤩

The only downfall to this “excursion” was that we really didn’t have that much time available to spend in Silverton before our train tickets back. (Spoiler, we ended up returning to Silverton on our own the next day!)

We were all hungry, and the little town was buzzing with other tourists, so we headed first to get some lunch!

There were quite a few options, but we ended up at this cute, Western themed restaurant that seemed popular and bonus- it had a live honky tonk piano player in the entrance. That really set the mood. 🙂

The pianist was a young woman who had grown up in Silverton and was nice enough to pose for a picture with my (back then…) little pianists. 😭 She was awesome!!

After lunch, we wandered around a bit, saw the Old City Hall building and ducked into some antique shops. This area is really known for excellent antique shops, and this is a big memory for me! The boys had really never been to an antique shop before this trip, and they had SO MUCH FUN looking at all the old items and treasures.

Too soon, we had to make our way to the train for our departure time.

Ready to board. 🙂

The train cars all had benches facing outwards. I remember when we had to pick our seats (before the trip, when I’d bought the tickets online), I had tried to research which side of the train had the best views on the way back to Durango.

Here we are heading out of the Silverton train depot. Next stop, Durango.

Of course, the beginning was very exciting.

I have so many beautiful pictures from this ride. The curves were such that you could get these neat pictures with both the landscape/ river and the train, as it wound around the bends.

It was, however, like I mentioned, a very long ride. The boys fortunately did fine, although we definitely required a stop at the “concessions car”. This was exciting for them, to buy popcorn and lemonade on a moving steam train!

Most of the ride was along the river. So pretty!

I would say I spent about 1/3 of the ride taking pictures of the views (😆), 1/3 of the ride just looking at the views, and then the final 1/3 of the ride thinking, Ok, I think I’m ready to be done on the train now. lol. It was a ~3 1/2 hour ride! That’s quite a long time to just sit and look out, even though the views were stunning.

I remember getting actually a bit sleepy but then not wanting to doze off, because we paid a lot for the train ride and I also didn’t want to miss anything! haha.

Finally we made it back to the depot in Durango!

By this point it was after 5 pm. I seem to have no further photos from that day, which I think means my phone died. haha. I remember that we went out for dinner- I recall wandering around in Durango and looking for places that could get us in. We landed on the large Steamworks Brewing Company which was a cool place!

I also remember discussing over dinner what we’d do the next day. We didn’t have any firm plans, besides knowing we needed to leave Durango at some point and drive the Million Dollar Highway to our next stop, Ouray.

We had tentatively thought maybe we’d take the boys ziplining, but also were unsure, because the options I found all seemed like they’d take a long time, thus eating up basically our whole remaining time in Durango. Many also seemed to be all booked up already, this late in the game.

Since we were in Silverton/ on the train most of Thursday, we hadn’t had time to really see much of Durango yet, despite staying there. Ultimately we decided we’d skip ziplining, and spend Friday more leisurely poking around Durango, and then perhaps stopping back in Silverton (we felt shortchanged there, too) as we made our way to Ouray.

Friday, August 16, 2019- more Durango + more Silverton –> Ouray!

Friday morning we headed back to the train depot, but this time with the intent to explore the great Railway Museum on site there. This is a SUPER cool spot- and underrated, I think! It didn’t seem very busy, which is such a shame.

The boys loved it! It’s very hands on (i.e. you can climb on things, in the trains, touch things, etc.).

Exploring an old train car:

This sign made us laugh- Pancho Villa! haha.

We spent longer here than I had anticipated, including a long talk with a museum worker who was very knowledgeable. I remember Ethan asking a bunch of questions. 🙂

From there, we wanted to just explore the little downtown. This old historic hotel, the Strater Hotel, is very beautiful.

We went inside to look around. One of those places that’s frozen in time.

From there, we hit up some more antique shops! Like I said, the boys really loved doing this on this trip. Even now when I see an antique shop, I tend to think of our time in Durango and Silverton. 🙂

By this point we were ready for lunch. We stopped at a food truck court along the street, which was fun. Afterwards, I remember walking down a side street to a Baskin Robbins ice cream place with one of the boys.

It was now early afternoon, so we figured we should probably hit the road. It was a couple hours to Ouray, and we still wanted to make a couple of stops. ALSO- the route from Durango to Ouray is part of the Million Dollar Highway, which is known not only for its extreme beauty, but also for being rather treacherous! There are no guardrails and every so often, people sadly drive off the edge of the cliff there… (This actually just happened last month- a total of 3 people died in 2 separate crashes! So sad.)

My point is, there was zero chance that we were going to be driving that after dark, so we needed to get a move on.

On our way out of Durango, we did stop at this fun honey factory called Honeyville.

They make honey and jams etc all on site, and I picked up a couple jars for my friend who was watching our hamster at the time! It’s also just a fun gift shop.

We then set out toward Silverton (on the way, anyway).

The main thing we still wanted to see in Silverton was the little historical museum. We hadn’t had time on our train day, but the boys were at such great ages for things like this. They were very into “the olden days” back then.

I don’t remember that many details, but I am pretty sure this museum is the site of where ALL the action happened in Silverton. This was a mining community, and the museum covers that in great detail. According to the website, this is considered one of the “finest mining museums in North America”.

There’s also the old county jail, other historical archives, and I believe the old house where the jailkeeper/ family lived, too. Anyway, lots of interesting things to explore and for the boys to learn about.

All about mining!

Learning about old transportation methods…

The original print press/ newspaper- and Asher signing the guest book for us.

It was a great spot- I’d definitely recommend. I remember being pleasantly surprised at what the little museum all had to offer! I think I even wrote a review online.

We were about out of time, but did one more quick wander through town. It was much quieter this time, being later in the day, without all of the train tourists! (Makes me wonder what happened there when the pandemic arrived, a year or so later…!) There’s not too much to Silverton without tourists, these days.

Million Dollar Highway

Time to hit the road. I was getting antsy about the drive! It was August, so plenty of daylight yet, but I was worried the sun would go down far enough behind the mountains that a) the views would be all shaded and not as pretty and b) maybe it would somehow reduce driving visibility.

I really do not have the best pictures at all from this! I remember being bummed- the views ARE stunning, but there’s really nowhere to stop along the way! So a majority of pictures are through the car window and/or all blurry. Ha.

I do remember thinking it wasn’t actually that scary. I mean, yes, there were drop offs, but it also didn’t “feel” like we were about to go off the edge at any point? Definitely can see how it could go awry pretty easily, though. Poor Ivan (and my dad, behind us) probably barely got to see any views – it’s an “eyes on the road” type of situation.

Driving through town on our way to our condo.

We made it in one piece! Checked in at our place, which was literally right along the river. Loved this, as we could even hear the sounds of the babbling river with the windows closed.

This place worked out well, as it was literally right in town- amazing location, which we wanted- yet from the balcony, all we saw was nature. A best of both worlds situation. (There are definitely places farther up in the mountains that are much more remote, but we didn’t want that this time- we weren’t going to have time to just sit around, anyway, since we had things to see and explore in the area. In fact, you’ll have to stay tuned, because some of the BEST pics and adventures from our trip will be in the next Ouray post!)

After getting settled in, we drove the (very) short drive down the street for dinner. Turns out BREWERIES are very popular in Colorado, lol, which is great because we love trying different breweries! Part of the fun of this sort of trip.

Of course, we had to try Ouray Brewery.

We were not the only ones with this idea on a Friday night, however, so we had to wait quite a while. Fortunately it was a beautiful night and we just hung out outside and kind of checked out the town a little bit, too.

Finally, dinner time. Very cute place!! Fun Colorado vibe in there.

We must have gotten slap happy from our long day/ drive or something, because I have several silly pics on my camera roll… ha.

Have to share this adorable one…. oh be still my heart…. this was our boys in restaurants for years (whenever we lingered longer than they were interested in chit chatting, which was…often. ha.) Don’t even get me going on how neither seems to read much for pleasure anymore!! 😭 I swear we did everything right…

Then, finally, back to our place to rest up for some Ouray adventures! We had 3 total nights in Ouray and lots of fun yet to come before our long trip came to an end.