Spring Break Road Trip 2011

This year, to escape the madness that is Texas with every school district having the same Spring Break, we decided to take a road trip to Colorado.  I remember as a kid going to Colorado several times with the family, riding the Durango/Silverton Train, camping out, getting sick on Pike's Peak...  ahh, good times.  Well, I wanted to share these memories with my beloved and our child.  My beloved had never been to Durango and, of course, neither had the child.  So, I started to plan.

Little did I know that going to Durango would involve a 16 hour drive.... funny, it didn't seem that long when my dad did the driving.  This would be the LONGEST road trip we've ever taken as a family.... longest by far.  So I fretted over the best route to take and ways to break up the long drive to avoid a mutiny en route.  M wanted to invite a friend so we did and his parents agreed.  Now my beloved and I were going to embark on the longest road trip ever with not one but two 9 year old boys.  I wasn't sure if that was better or worse...

I decided the first leg of our adventure would end in Amarillo.  I had grand plans to make it to Amarillo in time to take the boys to see Palo Duro Canyon.  I totally underestimated how long a 6.5 hour leg of the road trip would be with stops and a landscape that hardly changed from one county to the next.  Here is a pic of the boys playing at the rest stop outside of Wichita Falls where we stopped for a picnic lunch.

From there we continued on to Amarillo but didn't have enough daylight left to make the canyon, and really didn't want to extend the trip by another hour it would take to get there and back.  So, we let the boys play in the hotel pool then had dinner and walked around the mall to stretch our legs.

The next morning we started our 2nd leg of the adventure with the goal being to reach Albuquerque.  Our first stop was to visit Cadillac Ranch, which is quite a sight if you've never seen it.

If I thought the view from Denton to Amarillo was tiresome, the view from Amarillo to Albuquerque would make someone suicidal.  To top it off, after we passed the "Welcome to New Mexico" center we were advised the next rest stop would be closed.  OK, we'd stop at the third one.... only to find it closed as well.  As our only options for stopping were truck stops and some questionable establishments we continued on until we finally found a rest stop that was open for our picnic lunch.  Lucky for us the wind was only about 80 knots and FREEZING!!!!  Edd pulled the car literally up next to the picnic table to try and block some of the wind.  We had the fastest picnic lunch ever, worthy of a speed award and then finished our lunch in the car.

We arrived, finally, in Albuquerque and had the time we hoped for to visit the Unser Museum.  Unser, if you don't recognize the name, is a big racing family based out of Albuquerque and they have a museum dedicated to all of their glory.  Nope, not joking, every thing in the museum was focused on how great the Unsers are, makes you wonder.  But, it was a nice diversion for a while and they did have some cool cars so well worth the stop (especially since kids were free).

That night we ventured out to a movie after the boys checked out the hotel pool.  That night Edd and I also discussed at length just how we were going to make the trip back as, to this point, we'd left that open.  We decided that no matter what, going back to Albuquerque and down I-40 to Amarillo was NOT an option, we had to have better luck spending a little time in New Mexico as possible.  We've marked New Mexico off of our list, we've been there, we've seen it, we're done...

Monday morning we started our last leg of the journey to get to Durango.  As we were driving along trying to figure out what exactly would draw people to live in New Mexico we were shocked to come upon two signs, one telling us we were leaving New Mexico (WOO HOO) and the next saying we'd finally found Colorado.  Well, we had to stop and enjoy the moment, we even went back to memorialize the event on camera.

FINALLY!!!!  We'd made it to Colorado.  It was amazing, almost immediately the scene changed and we saw some redeeming value to the landscape.  Then, next thing we knew, we came around a mountain and VOILA, we were in Durango.

We had rented a condo in downtown Durango, within walking distance to the train, downtown, just about everything we planned to do, which was not much.  The condo was really great a shout out to VRBO once again.  If you're planning a trip to Durango give me a call or shoot me an email and I'll give you the contact information for this condo.  Here are the views from the condo:

Yep, if you look close enough in the 2nd picture, you can see the train station and rail yard.  Very cool.  Here are some pics of the interior of the condo...

Monday afternoon we walked around Durango and checked things out.  Tuesday we had train tickets for the Durango/Silverton Train which, in the winter (October - April) doesn't actually make it all the way to Silverton.

In the winter the train stops and turns around in Cascade Canyon which is beautiful.  In some places the snow in the canyon was over two feet deep (I know this because I stepped in it and was afraid I wasn't going to make it back out).  Needless to say the boys LOVED the snow and had a great time, while they could, playing in it.

The canyon is bordered on one side by the Animas River and there was a foot bridge across the river.  Amazing to see the mountains on all sides and the river rushing beneath you.

Hard to keep the boys out of the water, they really wanted to test it out even though we assured them it would be freezing.

Then we boarded the train and headed back to Durango.  Such amazing views!  We had to stop on the way back because while we were in the canyon a boulder had fallen onto the tracks and they had to bring a crew over to move it.  They said it was about the size of a VW, we saw it, it wasn't that big, maybe 1/2 a VW....

On Wednesday our goal was to stay out of the car.  We toured downtown Durango, let the boys play some baseball and football in the park

bought some souvenirs, had pizza as big as 1/2 a pie for lunch

and then went back to the condo to cook dinner on the grill.  It was a quiet and relaxing day.

On Thursday we started the long drive home.  This time cutting across Southern Colorado and spending as little time in New Mexico as we possibly could.  This meant crossing the mountains which was amazing to see.

We drove all the way to Amarillo on Thursday which, all in all, wasn't a bad drive.  On Friday we made the dreaded drive from Amarillo back to Flower Mound which was just as painful the second time.  We stopped again at the rest stop outside of Wichita Falls for a picnic lunch and the boys played some football.

In all we traveled approximately 1720 miles.  We were happy to learn in June AA plans on making daily flights to Durango....  come on June!  We'd love to go back and venture farther out around Durango but not at the cost of a 16 hour drive, couple of hours flight would be much much better!!!!

Now we're back to our regularly scheduled program and the start of baseball season!!!  Go Cowboys!