In an uncharacteristic venture off our normal path of hiking National Parks, Scott and I made the decision to veer off our travel plans and drive to Durango, CO to take an old steam train ride through the San Juan National Forest and Cascade Canyon. Last summer, my dad and his fiancee went out to Colorado and took the full day train ride from Durango to Silverton, and back. He absolutely LOVED it. I’ve never mentioned it on our blog, but my dad owns a really old Lionel train set. He has a whole set up at his house that takes up an entire room! It’s honestly amazing to see and he has put a lot of time and energy into making it realistic! It’s really cool!

Anyway, he loves trains. He suggested that we try to ride the train on our trip if we were able to. At the beginning of the trip, all Durango trains were halted. It wasn’t until a couple days ago that they opened up one line to take passengers from Rockwood Station (just north of Durango) through the Cascade Canyon. It was to be about a 2 hour roundtrip journey. We bought the tickets for the steam train, in an open air cart.

 

Rockwood Station is back in the San Juan National Forest and the access road is also a road people live on, and is very curvy! It seemed like we weren’t in the right place, but the train station opened up in front of us! We parked the truck and walked across the tracks to the waiting area. They had a woman dressed up in period clothes talking about the history of the train and when the tracks were laid.

We boarded the train, and were off! The train doesn’t move very fast, but it’s really cool sitting in the open air cars where you have unobstructed views! The train followed the Animas River before turning around and coming back. The only hiccup we had was when we were almost back to the station. The guide wheel on the engine derailed (sounds WAY scarier than it was!), and we had about a 30 minute delay while they went back and forth to get it back on track. Something to remember for sure! If you are ever in Southwest Colorado, I definitely suggest taking a train ride at Durango!

 

After the train ride, we made the decision to leave our campsite in Mesa Verde a night early and head to the Great Sand Dunes National Park. It was still pretty early, and there wasn’t anything other than the campsite keeping us in Mesa Verde. We drove the 4 hours and parked at a BLM site right outside the park at the Sacred White Shell Mountain BLM. It was dark by the time we got there, but we were definitely parked on sandy dirt. We just needed a place to sleep for the night, so we didn’t care! 🙂

Tomorrow, we visit our last National Park of this summer’s vacation: Great Sand Dunes National Park! We have added up our total parks between last summer and this summer, plus the several random ones we have visited together. So far, our total is 29 National Parks visited! We already have started plans in our head for Alaska, which has some of the most secluded and hard to get to parks- that won’t be for a few years, but it’s still fun to plan and look forward to!