All Aboard!!!!

Thank God! Harry finally got a day when someone else did the driving. We rode by train from Durango, Colorado, altitude 7,000 feet, to Silverton, altitude 10,000 feet in about 3 and one half hours yesterday. This amazing steam engine chugs it's way up into the mountains on a narrow gauge track that seems like it is about to send you plunging into the canyon 1,000 feet below, where a raging river cascades over boulders. Lots of fun!

The man who took our tickets told us that the track was constructed in 1889 by a crew of 1000 workers and it took them 9 months. Lots of dynamite required for the job. The train initially carried silver mined in Silverton to Durango, but the towns got together to preserve the train even after the silver was gone. The ride is so amazingly beautiful. The fall colors were intense. Each day, the train makes one trip up the mountain and back carrying tourists and elk hunters. In our car were 40 French tourists, an English couple and a couple from Finland. We have seen many Europeans and Japanese at the Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde and again today on this very special train. Our lunch in Silverton was in one of the town's many bordellos, now converted to a restaurant.

We arrived back in the posh little city of Durango about six p.m. and found a small French restaurant with a real French chef. We ate a shrimp and lobster bisque, and shared a vol au vent and a plate of coq au vin. We ordered a glass of red and a glass of white wine to share. Harry said he was not about to have a repeat performance of a few nights back. I was stuffed but still managed to stuff down a cream puff.

We chatted with the the chef and his wife after dinner. Their long-legged Jack Russell jumped up on his own high bar stool to sit at their dinner table with them. No, he was not eating coq au vin, he just sat there and watched as they ate theirs. The couple were our age and told us that a beautiful and very inexpensive place to retire was Quito, Ecuador. The climate is perfect year round, if you can get along at 10,000 feet, and they said a friend of theirs lives very well on a few hundred dollars a month. We, especially me, have experienced a little altitude sickness today. We are off to Santa Fe today for a couple days, not Ecuador (although that would be a nice place to visit after you adjusted to the altitude), and then on to St Louis to see our kids. We expect to be home by Halloween.

*I am now driving, whimpiness phase is over! (as long as it is not raining and I am on a four lane)