Silver Anniversary in Silverton, CO

2012 marked 25 years since Curtis and I were married. Wow! 

Where does the time go?

 We decided to go on a little get-away to celebrate and thought that Silverton CO would be a great place to spend our silver anniversary!

We left the Sunday after returning from our family vacation. We reserved a room in Cortez because the rooms in Durango and Silverton were pretty expensive. We wanted to do more on our trip than sit in a hotel room. Food would be good!

Just looking over a beautiful green valley on the way to Silverton.

On Monday morning we drove to Durango and on to Silverton. I have not been clear to Silverton before and let me say, 'Its quite the drive!' I think they paved a deer trail. It clings to the steep mountains and goes over several high passes before arriving in Silverton.

We had cool cloudy weather almost the whole trip. That was nice. Unless we were walking around and it started to rain.

We had cool, cloudy weather throughout our trip. 

                                         

Looking up Main Street in Silverton.

We decided to grab lunch before wandering and found ourselves in a bright pink building having a delicious pulled BBQ pork sandwich. 

Thee Pits BBQ-as seen on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives with Guy Fieri.

                                         

We spent the afternoon wandering through town, window shopping and being tourists.
We sprang for some yummy funnel cakes, taking Curtis back to his Ozark roots. 

I have always wanted to go into a mine. I don't know why, I don't particularly like cold, dark holes in the ground, but they intrigue me. When I was looking at what kinds of things we could do on our trip I saw that there was a mine tour just outside Silverton. Decided that would be one of our activities. (couldn't afford the Zip Line thing we looked at) After paying our fee and getting outfitted in hard hats and raincoats, we climbed onto the mine train and chugged our way into the mine. Not a big group, just us and a boy with his dad. Our tourguide sure had a good time with the little boy. At one point he was showing us how they drilled the holes to put the charges in and he had the little boy come hold the drill and then he swung up the sledgehammer. This was a really big man. He would count and the little boy kept dropping it fearing that his hands were going to get smashed. It was all in fun, but I don't think the little guy knew it. Our guide explained the bell system and lingo used in mines as well as the tommyknockers in the mines.

Heading into the Old Hundred Mine.

It was really damp and drippy in the mine. We were glad to have the overcoats. 

Some of the old mining equipment and my groom of 25 years!

After emerging back into the sunlight we hung up our gear and spent a few minutes panning for gold,(fool's) in the sluices they had set up there for that purpose. It seemed harder than I thought it would be. I kept swirling everything off my pan.

Curtis has always had a hankering to pan for gold. 

Any color?

Looking up the mountain from the mine entrance. There is a boarding house up near the very top that the miners lived in. I believe they said it was accessed by elevator from the mine. CRAZY!!

We left the mine and Silverton and drove back to Cortez, tired and hungry from our adventures. We decided to eat Mexican food that night. We both love it and it had been a while since we had had some. We ended up eating at Fiesta Mexicana and we liked it enough to plan to go back again.

Fiesta Mexicana

I'm in Utah taking a picture of Curtis in New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona!

We decided to take the long way home on Tuesday and we drove quite a ways up McElmo Canyon, admiring the farms and vineyards, before heading for the Four Corners Monument. I've lived a lot of my life in San Juan County and had never been there that I could remember. It was much more touristy than I thought it would be. We met a very interesting Navajo man there, Joe Begay, who was selling jewelry but who was also an actor. He spent quite a bit of time talking to us and showing us his scrapbooks of his career. He was on Little House on the Prairie once and I'm sure I saw him.
We took the obligatory pictures of ourselves standing in four states at once and then headed on to Bluff.

Mom and her childhood 'flame', John Wayne! (Gouldings Museum)

When we got to Bluff we found that Uncle LaMar, Aunt Colleen, and Aunt Erma were there and had plans to head to Monument Valley. They invited us along so we hopped into the van and off we went. We went to the Navajo Tribal Park and walked around their gift shop. It was a busy place and there were loads of foreigners there. Then we went to Goulding's to go through their museum and then we had dinner at Goulding's restaurant. Had a really good Navajo Taco. After driving up past the hospital between the rocks, we headed back to Bluff and home.

It was lovely to have no schedule and be able to spend 3 days together. I am so blessed in my marriage and I look forward to the next 25 years, and beyond! Hopefully, we won't have to wait 25 years for our next trip together.