Clean Up on Aisle 5

About 18 months ago, I stated playing with a trip plan, hoping to intentionally visit some counties that I'd never visited with my GPS in hand, and even more important, attend a couple major events in Seattle and Abbotsford, BC. Of course, we all know how that went. 

For the past couple years, I've picked away at California counties, including a bunch in Eastern California from my quick trip last summer and a small handful more just last month. Most of what is left is up the central corridor, the area that's typically our third choice for travel. That white area is enough to bug me into trying to clean them up.

In normal years, Oregon gets visited, but you can see the spots that have been ignored, primarily in the corners. There would have been another blank in the SE if it hadn't been for last year's quick trip.

As a Washington native with family ties to the state, I was a bit surprised to see how many counties I was still missing. I'm especially looking forward to getting some caches in San Juan county since I haven't been to the islands for years. Thanks to some other very interesting caches, I'm going to end up with a very circuitous route.

By the time I get finished cleaning up these three states, I should head directly home, but I have two more states where I've found caches in more than half the counties. There's certainly no straight route to getting the remaining 24 counties in Idaho, but I'll get to see lots of backroads and beautiful country in the process.

On last summer's trip I visited all the counties on the west side in Colorado. This summer, I'm hoping to finish up with the east side counties that I'm missing. With BJ's blessing, I'll take a couple extra days to visit the Colby, Kansas area as well, to drop some ink on the world's oldest existing geocache.

Eighteen months of planning and dreaming. There are nearly 1400 caches loaded in the GPS. The route totals about 8500 miles and I expect it to take 36 days. It will certainly be a great test of the Silver Subie's boondocking capabilities. I won't find all the caches I've loaded, but I expect to clean up the white spots in all five states.

Wheels should be rolling June 1st.

New Roads Home

We drove a little ways out of Moab before taking a left turn. We've always taken the shortest, fastest way home, but this time we stopped to check the maps. The office was closed, but we were on the right route to cut up and over the southern side of the La Sal Mountains, headed for Colorado.

We hadn't gone far when we noted a Sheriff's pickup with lights flashing coming the other way. Turns out, the deputy was running lead for a cattle drive. Some of the cows were apparently hungry, one seemed to want to face off,

but most wandered down the edge of the pavement, headed towards lower country.

It gives you the impression that the three cowboys were riding drag, but around the corner was another sheriff's vehicle providing support. A couple miles up the road we spotted a cow/calf pair that apparently escaped the cowboy's attention.

I had a few spots picked out to stop along the way so BJ could stretch her legs and I could look for geocaches. I wanted to pick up caches in three new-to-me counties but I didn't find the caches at the first two stops. I did find a really nice view, however.

The big town of Bedrock was my last chance for a cache in Montrose county. Choices were limited for caches that also had enough space for us to park safely.

Found it - an ammo can under a rock.

The views were pretty special.

We stopped at a cemetery in San Miguel County and then continued on to one of many fishing spots along the highway where the hint was vroom, vroom, CRASH.

All the markings were gone, but I think it may have been a Hudson at one time.

As we got higher, the aspens were starting to lose their leaves.

We made a quick stop in Rico to find a Dolores County cache which meant I've now found caches in 10 Colorado counties. I still need two more states with 10 counties before I can claim a "find" on a challenge cache in New Mexico.

We made another stop in the town of Dolores where I wanted to check out the old hay bailer. Three years ago, I was unable to locate the cache here. This time it took less than 3 minutes.

Home for the night was the Wally World parking lot in Cortez where we crossed paths with geocaching friends who winter in Apache Junction.

We really wanted to make time for a side trip to Durango but decided that would have to be another time. Instead, we headed to Four Corners. Initially our plan was to overnight at Canyon de Chelly but we decided it was early enough that we would keep heading south.

By late afternoon, we were home again, with proof that the roads between Four Corners and Holbrook were some of the roughest we've seen since our Alaska trip five years ago!

Durango

Some may ask why we went so far out of the way on the way home. It's not our fault. Friends we hoped to see in Western Washington moved back to Colorado while we were northbound, so we HAD to come home via Durango. At least they listened when we asked them to make sure their new house had a place for moochdockers to park.

They even made sure the town put on a fireworks show for us. Much better than last year when they weren't there and it was wet and stormy. This year was beautiful and shirtsleeve warm.

We had a chance to wander around town a bit, watching the various rafting companies and their clients enjoying the Animas River through town.

One of these days I'm going to actually go to Durango with an appropriate boat on the rack. BJ said I could go to 4Corners Riversports and buy some thigh braces for the sit-on-top, but I took a pass.

Turk enjoyed some walks with us, especially when he got to flop in the grass.

As we pulled out of town after 3 days of fun and friendship, we got to the railroad crossing just in time to wave to the train.

How soon can we go back?

Back Shop

I left the Anvil Camping Area west of Silverton after seven days with a list of things to do on my way through Durango. By the time I left Durango, I had clean clothes, some fresh groceries, empty waste tanks, and I'd enjoyed a solo guided tour of the back shops at the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railway.

When the original roundhouse burned down in 1989, a new roundhouse was built using the same location and turntable.They added more bays, expressly to make space for a museum. The museum is free admission.

They had a couple engines on display in the museum. Some of the kids touring the museum were quick to let me know that you could sit in the engineer's seat.

The owner of the railroad has an old, restored private car that spends most of its time in the museum. It looked like it would have been right at home in CBS' Wild Wild West TV show in the late 60's.

I was especially enamored by the Durango Depot when I discovered it was built in the 1882 as a temporary building. Amazing how long some temporary buildings last.

There were only two engines in the roundhouse on Thursday afternoon. Another engine sat outside waiting for overhaul, while three engines were out on the line with trains coming back from Silverton.

One of the benefits of losing the original roundhouse when it burned in 1989 was that most of the machines in the machine shop were fairly new. They can install new "tires" on the wheels and true them up.

There were a lot of original box cars sitting on sidings. Most were being used for storage - when you operate a fleet of antiques you never throw anything away.

What caught my eye were the four cars near the depot that were being used for offices. If you order tickets by phone, the operators are housed in a couple box cars!

They had a couple Post Office cars. One was rebuilt and was used as a commissary car. This one is going to take a lot of work. The steel parts are salvageable, but almost all of the wood will have to be replaced.

At least it's complete enough that they'll be able to use the original wood for patterns.

I was surprised to see one motor car that they have used at times. It's powered by a diesel engine and gets used to place Hot Shot crews when there are fires near the tracks.

My favorite part was the Car Shop. They're in the process of rebuilding this passenger car. The wood sill plates are original to this railroad, but almost all of the rest of the wood is new.

The wooden parts of the interior are nearly completed. Lots of sanding and varnishing yet to come.

They had a nice woodshop and are capable of creating nearly all special millwork necessary to rebuild these 120 year old cars. Looked like lots of fun to me!

Back shop tours are $10 unless you've been on the train in the past month. Then they're $5 per person.

Home for the night was a dispersed camp in the Sauls Creek area of San Juan National Forest, just outside of Bayfield, Co.

Three for the Price of Two

While I was chatting with the gal at the Visitor Center about the road to Animas Forks, she was weaving in information about the Historical Museum, Mayflower Mill, and the Old 100 Mine. Turns out, you can get a Heritage Pass that saves you several dollars admission fees if you do all three. Even better, you don't have to do them all the same day.

The San Juan County Historical Museum is located next to the County Courthouse at the northeast end of town. Part of the museum is housed in the former jail.

They recommended starting the tour on the third floor of the jail and then working your way down. The jail accouterments were all prefabbed and then shipped to Silverton for installation in the brick building.

For whatever reason, I found this to be one of the most interesting things in the jail portion of the museum.

The second floor of the jail included the jailer's residence. It would appear that he liked to play cards...

In the basement of the jail, the mining museum displays started with an assay workshop. There was a tunnel from the basement of the jail to the basement of the new building next door.

The new building was FULL of mining memorabilia and associated stuff. They had a full blacksmith shop set up in one area.

No mining museum would be complete without some old wooden boxes. The good stuff was gone...

The Old 100 Mine Tour is located about four miles out of town. The Old 100 Mine has a long history with a variety of different owners. They all had one thing in common - they didn't make any money! All tour participants are furnished with rain jackets and hard hats for the tour.

Unlike the mine tour in Bisbee where you never get off the train, this one included a walk through some looping tunnels. The tour leader had worked as a miner all his life.

There are muckers on display in various places around town. What was different was that this one actually operated, at least for a short demonstration. He also demonstrated a drill. Both units used compressed air for power, and both were very loud!

The 7th level boarding house sits about 2400' above the tunnel we toured. It was built in 1904 so that miners didn't have to travel back and forth every day, but was only used for about 4 years. The local Historical Society has led efforts to stabilize it and it can be visited by a trail that ends 200' above it. You're on your own from there.

I did the Mayflower Mill tour last. It's a self guided tour with descriptive text at about 20 different stations. This mill operated for much of the 20th century.

The mill didn't lend itself to photos, but I did enjoy the lower tram house. The tram was powered at the mine end, with rock from the mine dumped here for the mill, and miners riding the empty cars up the hill to work.

This tram is still complete. It's the only tram in the area that used steel towers. I found that it was possible to drive up the Arrastra Gulch road far enough to view several of the towers, even without 4wd.

The mill was electrically operated, using GE synchronous motors build in the 1920's. At one point, GE and the Smithsonian approached the mill wanting to buy this motor and its control system for display in the museum.

I'm really glad I did all three tours. I especially glad that I spread them out over a five day period!