The Million Dollar Highway to Silverton

  I believe this stretch of road, passing Ironton, is one of the maybe three flat, straight stretches of the hour long drive. Actually it wouldn't take so long, but you have, I mean want to drive 10-20 miles an hour because the roads are so curvy with a very long drop, and no guardrail.
Anyway, Ironton is an old ghost town. You can only access the old mining houses if you have an off-road vehicle. We did not.
We did pull over to take cool pictures though! The rocks are red from Iron - just incase you didn't figure it out on your own.

Ironton

 Our final destination was Silverton. It's an old mining town as well. Pictured here is the famous, Silverton/Durango railroad. We didn't do it, but my parents did quite a few years ago. My dad's pictures are incredible! It's worth the $$$.
We arrived into Silverton just in time to see the train pull it. It was pretty cool.

Group pic on the hiking trail near Silverton

 An old mine close to Silverton.








There isn't a ton to do in Silverton, but one cool thing (for kids) is to "pan for gold." Emily and I walked around town while the dads and kids scowered through a bag of gems and fools gold, along with other rocks and dirt. The idea is to pan like they used to do. They loved it!

 Here's is what the drive is like along the Million Dollar highway. It gets its name because it cost one million dollars to make. It could easily be named this for the views though.

Silverton

Silverton

 So on our way into town we had passed a beautiful park with a gorgeous river flowing through it. It was late in the afternoon, but we took the road that wove along the river and led us deeper into beautiful mountain vistas. We passed camp grounds and even tents just plopped on the lush green landscape.
We drove slowly down the dirt road until we came to a parking lot where there was a trailhead. The hike to the summit of some peak was rather far for our five children to accomplish, but we thought we would just walk until we needed to turn around.
We got out of the car and the blazing sun was heating us up quickly. I lathered us up with sunscreen, filled up our Nalgenes and all nine of us hit the trail.
We were warned by passer-byers that the trail was a bit muddy. Most of us were in sneakers, but the Brindley and Driggers all love a good adventure.

 Lilia led the way with great vigor. Sydney followed with the rest of the gang in tow. There isn't normally water on this part of the trail, but there has been SO MUCH RAIN that there was lots of mud and lots of streams. Pour Sydney got her shoe stuck in a seriously muddy spot. The rest of the group found a way around in the woods. Well we made it to a beautiful open space with a nice view of the mountain top. I set up my camera and we snapped a group pic. (above). Then we felt a few sprinkles. Then we heard thunder. Then we descended rather quickly to the parking lot. We were getting a bit rained on, but it wasn't too big of a deal. But poor Stephen fell into one of those small streams that probably isn't normally there, and got his pants and shirt all wet. Thankfully we weren't one of the ones sleeping in a tent that night. We were able to drive back to a house and change into dry, warm clothes.