Here We Come, Durango!

Yesterday, I started telling of our trip to Colorado.  I’ll continue on here, by starting at Trinidad.

After we stopped at Kim to use the restroom in the church building, we arrived in Trinidad.  We spent the night there in a motel, then dressed for church on Sunday.  Services were like one would expect in a typical, conservative Church of Christ.  People were friendly and thepreaching and singing were good.

The preacher started talking about patterns in the New Testament, and I was wondering where he would go with that.  He used that as a way to talk about the plan of salvation and the fact that we can easily see commonality in the New Testament when we read about the various conversions.  I hadn’t really thought about it in that way before, but he has a point.

Durango was our next stop.  We had motel reservations there for Sunday night and the train trip would be Monday morning.  Taking somewhat longer than we had thought, we arrived in Durango before the train station closed for the evening.  We picked up our tickets with no problems, and headed for the motel.  I visited with the motel clerk for a few minutes, who told me that we got a good deal on our room rate, as he was renting the remaining few rooms they had that day for $190 a pop.  We didn’t pay nearly that much for ours.  I can’t imagine almost $200 a day for a motel room that was average to good, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

Arising the next morning, we made our way to the complimentary breakfast area.  What a pleasant surprise to find a man “manning” the area constantly, and even cooking eggs to order (over easy, scrambled, etc).  The food was tasty, and the bacon strips almost had two sides.

We went to the train station, parked in the railroad lot (eight dollars a day), and walked to the depot.  We were a little early…the train before us was just leaving.  We would have about a 45 minute wait to leave.

I will tell you now that I was impressed all through our experience with the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad with how much they emphasized safety, maintenance, and inspection.  There were maintenance guys on each side of the departing trains watching the undercarriages of each car as they went by.  There were crews on the tracks, and a crew in a motorcar that followed us for a long while.  Our staffer in our car explained that they were there to watch for anomalies in the track and roadbed.

With about 30 minutes to go before departure, we boarded our car.  We bought first class tickets, and rode in the end car.  That meant we were able to use the platform on the rear of the car for observation, and we had a reserved table for us in the car.  The staffer, Chad, was there to see to our needs, provide complimentary water and soft drinks, and answer our questions.  He also told about the various places of interest as we passed by.  He knew the route by heart, because he didn’t have to do much looking out of the window to know where we were.

For the first few minutes, it was just Chad and us.  We talked easily, and Chad welcomed each of the passengers as they came on board.  Finally, it was time to go.  We left on time for our 3-hour (and some) trip to Silverton where we would spend the night in the Grand Hotel.

Next time, I’ll tell you a little about the railroad itself, and get us to Silverton.