THE REST OF THE TRIP

I apologize... It has been a little longer than I had intended before I got back to this and finish up the trip that Kerrie and I took to Colorado...

We left Durango and headed toward Grand Junction, Colorado, which was our final stopping place. This is a picture taken just outside of Durango. The time of the year that we traveled, which was early May, provided for some beautiful scenes along the drive. We wound thru the mountain from Durango to Silverton. There are some extremely steep grades in the road, and it was a pretty winding road in places. There was also snow in most locations, and as I said before, it was beautiful.

We stopped at the old mining town of Silverton, Colorado and looked around. This is a very old town and has a great deal of history. If we had choose to take our trip a week or two later, the train would have actually traveled all of the way from Durango to Silverton.

Of course, in addition to the touristy places, we went to the cemetery just outside of town on the hill. Kerrie loves to go to old cemeteries, and I must admit, I too found this one pretty interesting. In fact, after we left the cemetery we hit one of the "touristy" places and purchased two very large bound books with a listing of all of the graves, as well as some history about each person. This was truly a "wild west" town, with all of the salon fighting and shooting, etc. If anyone is ever interested in looking at these books please come visit. They are fascinating to browse thru, but plan on spending a little bit of time because you can get hooked on the hundreds and hundreds of names and stories. --- and you are welcome to stay as long as you would like. ;-)

We left Silverton after having spent a couple of hours their, and continued our trek to Grand Junction. Along the way we stopped off in one of the little towns and ate lunch. It was a bit of a drive, but it was a pleasant one.

Grand Junction-- I hope not to offend anyone that might read this, but I certainly didn't find it an exciting place to be and don't know that I would plan a trip around it. HOWEVER, we did spend only one night and didn't look around too much.

While in Grand Junction we went to dinner at a very interesting and enjoyable Italian Restaurant. The term interesting does not at all mean there was anything at all with the food or service, in fact, that is what made it good. Many of the waiters were young men of high school age. They were all dressed in a tux and very well mannered, as one would expect anyone to be dressed in a tux. :-) The other thing that was found interesting is that Kerrie and I discovered the pasta spoon. I'm sure many of you are probably giggling, and that is okay. I hope someone reading this has more culture that we obviously did. Anyway, we purchased 5 of them. They had them for sell, and if I remember correctly, they were $8.00 each. They are very heavy and nice spoons, but one of the main reasons we got them were to show/teach the children about "the spoon".

Okay, enough of the food and spoons---

The next morning we got up and headed for home.

On our way back home Kerrie spotted another old cemetery in the middle of nowhere (figuratively). Of course, this required a stop. The Mill Fork Cemetery is an interesting place to visit, if you are passing by--

The cemetery is back off the highway and you have to cross a bridge to get to it.

The cemetery is enclosed in chain link fence, which I'm sure is to keep the wildlife out. However, as this sign states, it doesn't prevent the rattlesnakes from entering. I'm not exactly sure why you would put a bench to sit on below a sign that states rattlesnakes are around... but I certainly wouldn't be sitting on it for very long--- if at all!

The cemetery is quite small, and bushes and other vegetation are between the headstones and markers. I only mention this because, as stated before--- RATTLESNAKES. Fortunately we were visiting early enough in the year, and it was cool enough, that they hadn't had time to completely awake and find human food. :-)

It was an fun stop, and historically interesting. I found some information on the Internet about the site when we got home that made it even more enjoyable to learn about.
Here is just one of several links. Enter Mill Fork in your Internet search engine and take a look at others.
http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/249781/

One of the old gravestones-


The cemetery is just up Spanish Fork Canyon, so we were home not long after...


Both Kerrie and I enjoyed the trip and time being together. It had been quite a while (years) since we were able to take off for a week, just the two of us, and we loved it! We enjoyed the things we were able to do and see, and even more, the time together.