Returning from dinner at Red Cliff sResort

Enjoyed dinner by the Colorado River at the Red Cliffs Lodge and Winery tonight and on the way home the setting sun just turned the cliffs to gold. Lodge has a wonderful Moab Movie Museum of movie history in the region and details all the movies filmed in the area from black and white era till current - very impressive!

Traveling Companions

Eric and Susan Arens at Gooseneck State Park with the meandering San Juan River cutting down into the plateau some 800 ft deep gorges. That will stop any wagon train in its tracks!!

Airstream Coffee Shop

Location Cortez CO.. lo and behold an older Airstream International converted to espresso coffee shop and drive through and a nice range of treats and snacks! Nice patio and furniture all done in the style of the era!

Grill night

About twelve grillers fed the ~60 campers for a Mesa Verdes cookout that with smoke, sizzle and jousting commentary reminded me of a reality TV cooking competition🐂🔥🍷🍽 Our pair of steaks are smaller because I trimmed mine first then saved half for the next day!

The storeroom in the Indian museum

Many many beautiful examples of pots exhibited at the Edge of the Cedars museum in Blanding but the storeroom with the vast stay of pots that are not exhibited is much more impressive! No price tickets on these!

Monument Valley

Nothing quite as iconic and beautiful as Monument Valley to remind you that you are on the most wonderful adventure in a foreign land and still within the USA! Left mitten, right mitten are the names of the two left rocks!

Breakfast treat

Love my soft boiled eggs and buttered soldiers!

Never seen this before!!

Some kind of automated laundromat tub for dogs! Select either clean, disinfect, flea treatment, blow dry! I wish I had time to hang around until a dog owner came along and ran his pouch through it!

Handle Bars for Silverton Lunch

Trip Advisor Review: Early train start in Durango without time for breakfast and a four hour slow steam train journey leaves you standing in the town center of Silverton (origination a ton of silver) around noon mighty hungry. Most reviews of local restaurants are pretty good and leave you unable to differentiate so it takes the recommendation of a local friend to make a choice which we did not regret! A half slab of ribs, a burger, a barbecue sandwich, soups and salads were all excellent! A little disorganized due to two conflicting street or store entrances to the restaurant but eventually seated in a quaint dining room with more seating at the bar along one entire wall. Wait staff very attentive and helpful despite quite crowded tables but we all enjoyed the eclectic collectibles, stuffed wildlife and joshing humor of the staff. Would certainly recommend it to travelers to this small 200 winter 800 summer population quaint former mining town at 9,500 feet altitude.

Durango to Silverton

All my life I've wanted to take this steam train - something I inherited from the last days in the 1950's of steam locomotives in England! Three and a half hours climbing out of Durango at 6500 ft to Silverton at 9300 ft following a mountain stream with waterfalls and precipice edge canyons. Covered in soot and grit from the locomotive!

High Rockies above Durango

Took a jeep trek up the valley to 12,000 ft to overlook the young sharp geological formation of the Rockies ranges surrounding Durango. A rough ride up the mule mining trail of La Plata valley pioneered by the highly lucrative silver and gold rush in the area.

Trout hatchery

Thousands of little trouts raised from eggs and ready to be distributed into lakes and rivers at the fish hatchery in Durango. Just your shadow presence was enough to start a frenzy in expectation of feeding!

Conquer the highest sand dune in North America!

Sand dunes and you are not anywhere near the seaside or beach! Almost too unusual to understand how this can happen however a dried out sea bed and two conflicting winds have managed to create a minor environmental miracle - add two rivers that feed either side of the sand dunes and you have a wildlife mix that astonishes you when standing in the middle of the Colorado mountains at 7,100 feet altitude! Only attempt climbing to the peak of you are fit and have two hours or more! This is the proverbial two steps forward one step back. Kids love the boards you can rent to slide down the dunes. Essential to take water, shoes for the potentially very hot sand 140 degrees max, and wind and sand protection like glasses and wind breaker. A treat to have a national park that you can act as wild as you like and cause no damage to yourself or to the park!

Great Dunes

Hard work these dunes! We had an hour or so to explore and walked up the dunes two steps forward and one slide back only so far before coming back to check out of our RV site and make our way - only 130 miles or so - our last travel day to Durango. Finally in our alpine caravan site and meeting up today with our 57 other Airstream travelers in 30 campers!

Power generation

Kansas is about 400 miles wide and takes a whole day to drive across. Unbelievable number of wind farm turbines in Kansas stretch in their hundreds as far as the eye can see... they co-habit with many spinning oil pumps sitting out in the middle of vast agricultural fields, which are in themselves generating the bulk of the country's food. Grain elevators on the horizon in all directions. Taking full advantage of airborne resources, underground resources and land cultivation resources but hardly a soul to be seen! Serious business! Maybe Kansas is a good place to lose a few thousand Syrian refugees!

Overnight in Illinois

Convenient on day 2 of our journey west we stopped in Cobden Illinois at Margaret's brother Andy beautifully landscaped homestead - naturally he is a professional landscape architect!

Cross Country

Two thousand miles in four days! The beast and silver cloud devoured mostly I-64 and I-70 onwards and onwards to the Rockies and eventually to Durango Colorado where we join 30 Airstreamers for our South-West Adventure. Beautiful rides through West Virginia and Colorado mountains offset by the tragically depressing and decaying cities we passed through like Charleston WV, St Louis MO and Kansas City KS. Oh for the wide open spaces...!