Arboles, Creede and Alamosa, Colorado

We departed Lake Powell on Sat, July 29^th and drove to Arboles, Colorado and Navajo State Park for a two-week stay. Although we didn’t have our boat with us, we enjoyed our great view of the lake. We also enjoyed watching all the families, with their RVs and boats, come and go on their summer vacations.

On Saturday, we drove to Durango about 40-miles away to go to their Farmers Market. We got some fantastic home grown tomatoes, lettuce, and beets. We enjoyed those tomatoes on salads and even a few B-L-T sandwiches. After shopping at the Farmers Market we went to one of our favorite breakfast places, The Durango Diner.

We left Navajo State park last Saturday and drove east through Pagosa Springs, over Wolf Creek pass (at 10,856 feet of elevation), through South Fork and north to Creede for a 5-night stay. We had never been to Creede before and it’s a beautiful area of Colorado with a silver mining history. Creede has a year-round population of just over 400, but grows quite a bit during the summer with the influx of summer residents (mostly Texans) and other summer visitors.

    

From its headwaters in the nearby mountains, the Rio Grande river flows through Creede on its way south to New Mexico and Texas.      

Creede was a very interesting town with its 125-year old hardware store, gift shops, and many restaurants. We especially enjoyed dinner at Arp’s restaurant our last evening. I thought they had the best carrot cake on the planet.

We departed Creede on Wednesday and drove 75-miles to Alamosa for a 2-night stay. We had reserved seats on the Rio Grande Scenic Railway a few weeks ago for their trip to and from La Veta today, a trip just over 50-miles one-way. We left Alamosa at 9:30AM and the scenery was spectacular, especially going through the mountains near La Veta pass.

Our seats were in the Super Dome car and later we ate lunch on the train in the dining area of our dome car. We had time to walk down town to get some ice cream after arriving in La Veta. We also wandered into other cars, including the private car that used to be on the Chicago-New Orleans route. We also enjoyed the open air car to see the scenery and get lots of fresh air.

Steve & Julie Cornelius