Durango and Silverton, part 2

On Sunday we headed to Silverton, prepared to stop and hike along the way.   We soon found a trail head that looked interesting if a bit crowded.  We started out following a family with a swarm of little kids, but they soon left us behind because we kept stopping to take pictures.  After that we passed a few people coming down the mountain and we had to stop to let mountain bikers pass us a couple of times, but otherwise we were alone except for the birds, deer, and chipmunks.

 The Engineer Mountain Trail starts out in a field of wildflowers on the side of the mountain and eventually heads into the forest.  We began the hike at a little over 10,000 feet and climbed from there!  We thought we would feel the elevation, but we must be acclimated from living at 6,000 ft because we did very well.

We were just starting to wonder how far we had to go to reach the summit when a fellow hiker on her way down pointed out the storm clouds rolling in.  So we hiked to the next vista, took some pictures, and turned around. 

 We hiked for a little over an hour.  About 20 minutes after we reached the truck it started to rain and then hail.  Good timing!  We explored some other side roads to see a lake and a lookout.  Here I am using the binoculars in the rain:

 

Next stop was Silverton, Colorado, population 630.

 

We ate lunch at a charming restaurant, walked around the town for a bit, then when it started raining again we went to the San Juan County Historical Society Mining Museum.  It was fascinating!  It's huge, and we spent a good deal of the afternoon there.  We mostly forgot to take pictures because it was so interesting...

It was 52 degrees and rainy when we left Silverton so we headed back to the nice, warm, cozy condo and picked up pizza from a place down the road.  What a great day!

The next day we headed back to Albuquerque after a leisurely breakfast of leftover pizza.  We stopped at this hot spring and took some pictures.  Again, it was a beautiful day to start and there were storms in the afternoon.  It is monsoon season here in the Southwest, and we are glad of it because it was a bad fire season and the forest trails around Albuquerque have been closed for weeks due to fire danger.

We arrived safely back in Albuquerque to find that we had gotten an inch of rain while we were away, and the rangers have re-opened the Sandia trails!