Castle Chronicles

saturday morning was spent in durango.  we inadvertently caught the tail end of a cowboy parade, much to the delight of the girls who both love horses. we wandered around the train museum and walked almost to the end of main street.  we ate a picnic lunch at the park, then headed back to the resort (we stopped to take some extra silly pictures on the way back). the view on our drive into durango the horse led wagon at the end of the parade an impressive model train set up extra silly pictures  back at the resort, we paid for tickets to ride the alpine slide which include a one way lift ride  there were plenty of yellow leaves to see from up high... after the slide, we headed to the heated outdoor pool  the girls had a blast, and the parents survived  (the water was actually warm, but the wind...) we spent the evening relaxing with pizza and a movie the next morning, we packed up, checked...

on friday, we boarded carriage #3 and rode the narrow gauge railroad from durango to silverton.  we chugged along near the las animas river, through (gambel)  oak covered hills into pine covered mountains, and along the cliffs of cascade canyon.     we passed through quiet get away drop offs, only reachable by the train or foot.   we wound our way back to the river before reaching the small town of silverton . the girls especially enjoyed the outdoor musical park. we stopped for water at the tank creek water tank going both directions. c insisted we get a picture of  us  on the caboose. excerpt from dinner conversation - m:"she was dead weight on the train."  a: "i'm not dead" (in her cutest squeaky voice)

  we made it there and back again.  we had a great time but adjusting back to normal life is always kind of rough (i write this as the girls of course are refusing to go to bed nicely).  i will try to do a few highlight posts, but they may be a little intermittent as we have a busy weekend ahead of us!  we left wednesday morning, taking I-25 south to US 160 W.  our 1st stop was in Alamosa , where we found a cute park to have our picnic lunch.  the girls enjoyed watching the squirrel climb in and out of the trash can. our second scheduled stop included a short hike to the bottom of treasure falls.  directions were not very clear so we paused at a scenic overlook before actually finding the falls, but the stop was definitely our favorite part of the day.  considering the girls love water and most of the rest of the day was spent in the car, that may not be saying much.   after hiking to the falls and climbing around a bit, we co...