Road trip

Today is Saturday already and in a few hours my Mother-in-law is throwing a party to celebrate our moving to the US. Needless to say, the kitchen is currently a hive of industry, with foods from across the world rapidly coming together. We have cheesecake, crème brûlées, spinach & artichoke dip, taco salad, sausage rolls, and cheese & onions on sticks - among others.

In fact, this week has been a bit of whirlwind in general. As I mentioned previously, on Tuesday morning we set out on our road trip taking in the Chaco Canyon national park in New Mexico, and a ride on the Durango to Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad in southern Colorado.

Reaching Chaco Canyon was the first challenge, as the park covers an immense area, only part of which is the canyon itself. First we had to cover 13 miles of rocky, dusty unpaved roads, getting our teeth shaken halfway out in the process. This is certainly not the place to take OAPs! In any case John, my brother-in-law, handled it quickly and skillfully, and we were soon there.

The main canyon area holds a particularly rich collection of native American (Chacoan) buildings, including several so-called 'Great Houses', which consist of over a hundred rooms fulfilling various habitation, ceremonial, storage and religious purposes. The most famous, because it has been fully excavated, is Pueblo Bonito. We were given a great tour around by a park ranger (walls are not much use without someone to put it all in context!), who explained that in 1941 a gargantuan piece of rock (over 100 feet high) had separated from the canyon wall and crushed some 30 rooms of the original structure. I really enjoyed learning some of the history of my new home, and the canyon itself was truly spectacular.

After another bumpy ride back to civilisation, we carried on into Colorado. It was quickly apparent that this new state (to me at least) is very different from New Mexico. For one, the sand and hardy, prickly desert plants gave way to GRASS AND SOIL again - imagine that! However, Colorado also contains part of the Rocky Mountains, and I could see in the distance the snow-capped mountains we would be riding up the following morning.

On arriving in Durango, we scoped out somewhere to eat and ended up at a microbrewery/pub/restaurant in town, where - much to my delight - I discovered they make several Hefeweizen-style beers. My fears of being unable to find continental beers beyond Stella are proving to be mercifully unfounded.

We then returned to our hotel, which was a simple, motel-style Best Western. Still, America certainly knows how to do reasonably-priced accommodation without putting guests in a box! The rooms were spacious with TWO queen beds, allowing the seven of us to save a whole 50%, and ample amenities. This included a swimming pool and HOT TUB!, which proved a lovely relaxing way to end a very tiring day.

In the morning, we were up early to catch the train for our 3 hour scenic trip up to Silverton, climbing around 3,000 ft in the process. The mountains, some snow capped, and rocky gorges were beautiful, though the narrow gauge rails somehow didn’t seem wide enough to support a massive steam train!

The best part was undoubtedly the couple of open-air carriages with their outward-facing seats, which made it possible to really get a fantastic view, without craning your neck or having glass get in the way.

At the top of the route lay the tiny town (population 500) of Silverton, once made prosperous by its many silver mines, but now known mostly for the railroad and skiing in the winter. For lunch, I opted to try the confusingly named ‘chicken-fried steak’.

Theoretically, this should be some kind of cousin of Schnitzel, made using some sort of steak. In the event, it was more akin to twice-fried dog! Perhaps I’ll try it again one day, as the waitress made it painfully obvious that it wasn’t even freshly made, so it perhaps wasn’t the best specimen to judge by…

On the way back down, I was glad to spend some time with my brother, who was having a field day at all the interesting geology we were driving through! I have to admit, it can be hard to grasp what he does at times, with our areas of expertise being so far apart, so I now at least feel like I get it a bit more :-) Unfortunately all the loose rock remained tantalisingly out of reach.

Anyway, that’s it for now. More about the rest of the week in the next exciting instalment ;-)