Day 36 Sunday September 14, 2025
The temperature was in the low 40’s this morning but it warmed up nicely and was a beautiful day. Nothing like what we had yesterday.
No group activities planned today. We discovered this morning there is a lot of ground hogs across from our campsite in a vacant area of the campground. They were out of their burrows playing with each other.
We had made plans to meet two other couples at a winery just outside of town around noon. Per their website they made Riesling wines among others. I had noticed that Google Maps showed them as permanently closed but I checked and they had a live website so we assumed that Google Maps was mistaken. Wouldn’t be the first time. But guess what Google Maps was correct. One of the group called their phone number and the person that answered said they had been closed 5 years. Well DUH, why don’t you close down your website.
So we met the other couples in Cortez at a restaurant and had lunch before returning to the campground for the day.
Day 36 Monday September 15, 2025
Today was another free day so we invited Sean and Lorraine to go with us to the Four Corners Monument about 40 miles from the campground. This is an optional stop on our trip a few days from today but our travel info sheet states that the parking lot for RVs is rough so we didn’t want to take the motorhome there. We checked out the RV parking lot and were glad we didn’t come here in our motorhomes. The parking lot had a lot of big pot holes in it. It looks like as much money as they were taking in they could fix a better parking lot.
This is the only place in the United States that the corner of four states comes to a point and you can literally stand in four states at the same time. Wow! The states are Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. There is an entry fee of $8 per person and Fantasy will refund the $8 to anyone in the group that goes. The Navajo and Ute Native Americans people live in this area and there were probably 30 or so vendors there selling their hand made Native American jewelry, etc.
We also got to try Fry Bread which is a Native American bread that is popular here. It kind of reminds us of funnel cake like we would get at the NC State Fair except it is basically flat. They also sale it as a Navajo Taco which is the Fry Bread but they cover it with items like you might get in a taco. Lena and I just got one Fry Bread and a Huckleberry Lemonade and shared it.
We returned to Cortez and went to a Native American Pottery shop. I bought a small piece of pottery. It was the first souvenir I have purchased on this trip. They had a lot of very pretty pottery and all of it was made by either Ute or Navajo people.
The Wagonmasters and Tailgunners cooked hamburgers and hotdogs for the group at 5pm at the campground in one of the covered pavilions. Then we had a short travel meeting for our short 54 mile trip to our next stop in Durango Colorado.
After the meal and meeting Sean and Lorraine invited us to go with them into town to get ice cream at the local DQ. Lena and I got a hot fudge sundae, the first one we have had in years.
Day 37 Tuesday September 16, 2025
We believe we saw a Bald Eagle this morning in a tree on the edge of the campground property. The sun was behind him so we couldn’t make out the white on his head and tail but his size and shape indicated a Bald Eagle. We slowly got ready for our short trip this morning and departed at 10:30. Checkin time was noon so we needed to kill a little time on the way. We decided to stop at Mud Creek Hogan Trading Post to look around. They sell a lot of local Native American made items such as pottery, jewelry, etc. Some of the pottery had very intricate designs on them that were cut into the surface. They had to be very talented artists to do the designs. We didn’t buy anything but did enjoy looking. One piece I really liked was about 6” tall and maybe 6” across at the widest point and was priced at $950.00.
We had a good drive to Durango and got to Alpen Rose RV Park about 12:20 and was escorted to site “L”. We really like the site, it was level and had a very large shade tree that shaded most of the front end of the motorhome until about 5pm when the sun moved around. We had a large patch of lush green grass and a privacy fence between us and the pickle ball court.
After a lunch of leftovers we drove into Durango to local the train station where we have to be in the morning. On the way back we stopped at a produce stand and bought peaches, tomatoes and a cantaloupe. We had ate our last peach for breakfast this morning. This will probably be the last peaches we get as the season is about over. We don’t have much luck finding good peaches in the grocery stores.
Day 38 Wednesday September 17, 2025
We drove to the Train Station parking lot along with the others on the tour for a bus ride to Silverton Colorado. We will ride the train back from Silverton to Durango this afternoon. The bus ride was over an hour long but only about 40 miles. The route was on US 550 and is a very scenic road. There were some sections where there was a steep drop off on the side and no guard rails. The bus driver said the reason for no guard rails was so the snow plows could push the snow over the edge in the Winter when it snows. The elevation was over 11,000’ part of the way.
From what we have been told US 550 from Silverton on is even more dangerous to drive and is called the Million Dollar Highway, some say it got its name because it cost a million dollars to build and some say it has million dollar views.
Silverton was a mining town many years ago as was a lot of this area. I don’t think there is any mining going on now in this area. Silverton is a small town, only Main Street is a paved street and it has a total of four streets. It appears that the industry here is tourists now. There were several gift shops, several restaurants, a few hotels, a couple of coffee shops, 2-3 churches. One of the old hotels was around during the time of the famous Bat Masterson. There is a large wooden carved piece over the bar and there is a bullet lodged in the wood right beside a couple of the carvings on the wood. The story goes that no one is sure if he was shooting at someone and missed or was just firing a warning shot. We walked in the bar and took a photograph of the piece with the bullet in it and it is very obvious.
We needed a little snack after walking around for a while and spotted a small place serving four different kinds of funnel cake so we ordered two kinds and shared them. But strangely enough they didn’t serve coffee so we got a strawberry lemonade.
We walked all over town, taking photos and decided to get a lite meal before boarding the train for our 2:45 departure to Durango. Blair street was infamous back in the Wild West days for houses of ill repute (brothels). There were 28 brothels in Silverton in its hey day. We saw The Shady Lady Restaurant on Blair Street that was serving roast beef sandwiches so we decided to eat there. The building was used as a brothel until 1947 and Jew Fanny was the last Madam to ply her trade in Silverton.
The waitresses were wearing dresses like you probably have seen on ladies in saloons in old western movies. The sandwich was good.
Everyone boarded the train and we headed to Durango at 2:45. The train is powered by an oil powered steam locomotive. The car we were riding in was originally built in 1881 and has never left this area once it was delivered here. It was really nice inside. The walls and part of the ceiling was covered in beautiful oak wood. Our conductor told us the wood had been replaced when they reconditioned the car. The train owners have several carpenters that can reproduce about anything in wood. The seats were designed so that the backs could be flipped so that no matter which way the train was going the passengers were facing forward.
Our car was an enclosed car but the next car up was an open air car so I went to that car to take some photos. The train tracks followed the Animas River almost all the way to Durango. The views along the Animas River were spectacular.
We saw several mule deer along the way. One was under the outside stairwell at one house just munching away. The tracks where laid between 1880-1882. The train is a narrow gauge train meaning the tracks are only 36” apart where regular train tracks are 56.5”. The advantage of the narrow gauge is they are cheaper to build and the tracks can be laid around sharper curves.
We got back to the train station in Durango about 6:15pm and we were all glad to get back because the seats were getting rather hard. With all the curves the train had to maneuver around it swayed a lot but I think everyone really enjoyed the experience. We saw some amazing scenery.
Us and two other couples had reservations at Perbacco Cuciana Italian Restaurant at 7pm which is right beside the train station. We were a little early but they were able to seat us anyway. Several others from our group were also eating there. The food was very good and as usual we couldn’t eat it all so we have a meal when we get to our next campground on Friday.
We had a great day but was glad to get back to the motorhome and rest.
Day 39 Thursday September 18, 2025
Lena and I decided to do some exploring today. First we stopped on Main Street in Durango to get Lattes and pastries at Jean Pierre Bakery. The Lattes were good, the pastries okay but they sure were expensive.
Then we drove out of town for about 30 miles to Aztec New Mexico to tour the Aztec Ruins that date to about 1000 years ago. They are located at the Aztec Ruins National Monument. We watched an 18 minute film before we toured the small museum in the visitor center and then we toured the area outside that had been abandoned. After the last people to live here about 900 years ago left the area was covered over with sand through the years. All of the buildings have not been excavated. We were able to bend down at the very low door ways and get inside some of the structures. It is amazing how many rocks it took to build the structures and everything was done my manual labor. The film we watched said that the main community building called the Kiva was reconstructed and with modern equipment it still took about 6 months.
After riding through the town of Aztec we headed back to Durango and stopped at Emma Sweeney Prop Wooden Train. The train was built for the 1949 movie A Ticket To Tomahawk. They used a real locomotive for some of the scenes but this train was built for other scenes and was made mostly from wood. The movie had four dance halls girls in it and one of them was a then unknown Marilyn Monroe. There has been a lot of movies filmed in this area including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
We returned to the campground for lunch and to rest and get a few things ready for tomorrow’s trip to Bluff Utah. Yes, we are going back to Utah.
We had our travel meeting at 7pm followed by s’moors. We have enjoyed our time in Durango. I think it is the largest town we have stayed at on this trip and yet it is not a big town. We have also enjoyed seeing green grass and tall trees again. But that will change tomorrow.
Day 40 Friday September 19, 2025
We discovered our milk was going bad when I made coffee this morning for breakfast so we made a quick run into Durango to get milk at the City Market grocery store before we finished getting ready to leave because where we are going today does not have a grocery store only a few items at a convenience/gas station.
Our route today causes us to backtrack 50 miles to Cortez and then we have another 100 miles before we get to our destination of Bluff Utah. We fueled up at a Mavericks in Cortez. We only needed 40 gallons to tip off the tank but we will be heading out into the “wild blue yonder” today and fuel may be hard to find. We are really traveling today. Our route will have us leaving Colorado, crossing into New Mexico, then Arizona before arriving back in Utah again. I know it sounds like we are riding around in circles and we kind of are doing just that and we only traveled 155 miles today. The last 10 miles or so in Arizona the highway was so rough I told Lena we better keep our mouth shut or our fillings may fall out. Part of our route took us through the Navajo Nations Reservation.
We saw something on the way today we have never seen. I have mentioned that in some areas there are signs up on the sides of the roads about Open Grazing and we have had to stop to let two cows cross the road in front of us. Today we saw some signs with cows on them as we have seen many time. But we also saw one post that had a sign with a cow on it and another sign with a horse on it. Then later we saw three horses that were between the field fence and the highway. Then we saw where a horse had been hit by a vehicle and was lying in the ditch dead. It had been dead for a while. I can just imagine how much damage it did to the vehicle.
We got to the little town of Bluff and checked into Cottonwood RV Park and set up in site C5 about 1:15pm. This is the second Cottonwood RV Park we have stayed at on this trip. We have a nice view out our windshield. This is not a large campground and our group has got every site that has utilities connections. There is only two other RVs here besides our group and they don’t have any utilities.
After we had our leftovers for lunch we rested a bit and then rode around this tiny town of Bluff Utah. There are some totally amazing rock formations here in town. The view from our campsite is wonderful but when you drive right up close to the towering rock formations it is something else. I don’t think we have been this close to this type of rock formations before today. Some of them look like the next strong wind would cause them to topple over and come crashing down the hill. There is a trading post and restaurant built almost right up against some of the huge mountain of rock. Then when you drive a mile out of town the land is flat again, totally weird.
Late this afternoon we were walking around the campground taking to our fellow travelers and we could see lightning flashing in the distance. It almost looked like a fireworks show. In about an hour we got the edge of the storm, with some wind and a little rain. But not enough to even lay the dust. Everyone we have talked to said they have had a really dry Summer in this entire area. Most places that have grass are having to irrigate to try and keep it alive.
Day 41 Saturday September 20, 2025
We slept in until about 8:15 this morning. We don’t have any group activities until 6pm when the Fantasy Team will prepare a campground cookout for the group followed by our travel meeting for tomorrow.
Lena and I decided to treat ourselves to breakfast at Twin Rocks Restaurant here in the tiny town of Bluff Utah. We had checked their menu and they serve Blue Corn Pancakes. I like pancakes but have never had them made from blue corn flour so I ordered them. They came with sunflower seeds, organic blueberries, a sliced strawberry, butter and of course syrup. The Navajo in this area grow the corn. Lena had Fry Bread Sausage and Gravy with fried potatoes. The restaurant sources all their ingredients from small local businesses whenever possible.
The pancakes were the best I have ever eaten and even the coffee was good. Most restaurants make their coffee so weak it doesn’t even taste like coffee but theirs was good. Lena said her meal was also delicious but too much for one meal so she got a take out box for the remainder. We have noticed that in this part of the country they use a small brown paper box about 4” square for a take out box when we have leftovers. We really like that because they fit so much better in the refrigerator and the paper will decompose in the trash where styrofoam will not.
They sell the blue corn meal in bags and fry bread flour with the recipes for the pancakes and fry bread. We purchased a bag of each. The flour and the corn meal was milled in Cortez Utah near where we stayed a few nights ago.
Next door was a Trading Post selling different types of Native Indian art, like pottery, blankets, ear rings, bracelets, etc. The Native Indians are very talented artists.
As we were talking to the two Navajo ladies that were working in the trading post the topic of the recent tornado in Utah came up. They said it came within about 20 miles of Bluff and one of the ladies had a great photo on her phone of the tornado.
From the restaurant we drove over to the Bluff Fort Historic Site. In 1880 the President of the Church of the Latter Day Saints sent a wagon train of 258 people with 83 wagons to this area to settle here and establish a settlement with a goal of establishing a better relationship with the Indians in the area. The average of the males was 33.5, the females 28 and the children was 7. It took them 6 months to travel the 250 miles, averaging just 1.7 miles per day due to the rough terrain. Just to compare we can travel that distance comfortably in our motorhome in 5 hours. This was the last organized wagon trail of its size in the United States.
The reconstructed Co-Op building had a lot of displays and historic information about the fort. The upstairs had lots of hand made quits on display. There were numerous cabins that are reconstructed to the same size, etc as the original cabins. Most of them had actual items from the families that settled here. The items were donated by descendants of the original families that were on the wagon train. This was a very informative visit and there was no fee to tour all the buildings,etc. They maintain the fort by sales of items in the gift shop, donations and from the bake goods and ice cream they sell from the onsite kitchen. Lena got a vanilla and pineapple ice cream cone and I got a big Cowboy Cookie. Both were excellent.
Something else we see a lot in this area is a water fountain for the public that has filtered water dispenser you can use to fill your water bottle. It is vital in this dry climate that you stay hydrated. I filled my water cup up at the dispenser and there was a digital counter on it that stated this fountain had saved over 18,000 water bottles from going into the trash.
Then we drove through some of the streets in the residential area up a hill to a cemetery that has a beautiful view of the rocky cliffs and the small town below. We could see our campground from the hilltop.
Our next destination was Sand Island to see the Petroglyphs about 4 miles out of town. To see them good we would have had to climb up a rocky path so we looked at the few we could see from the road. We did see where some idiots had defaced some of the rock face with their names and the year 1963. It is hard to understand some peoples mentality. We rode down to the boat launch on the San Juan River before returning to Bluff and a stop at the Bear Ears Education Center.
The center had some Native Indian art like the trading post and a lot of display panels with the history of the area and some of the history of how badly the Indians of this area were treated in the early 1900’s. Families were separated, forced to have their hair cut and forced the children into schools where white children went to try and convert them to white peoples ways of living. Also their Native Ancestral Lands were taken away and forced to live on Reservations.
We returned to the campground to rest before our get together tonight. Later we joined Sean, Lorraine, Bill and Susanne at Sean and Lorraine’s RV for some appetizers before joining the rest of the group at the Wagonmasters RV for a delicious meal of chicken and pasta with a garden salad and Tiramisu Cake for dessert.
After we ate Sean played his guitar and harmonica and sang several songs to cap off the evening.
It had been a nice day, not too hot and then cooled off nicely in the evening. Bluff is one of those small towns that if you didn’t know any better you would drive right through in 5 minutes and not stop. But it has a long and interesting history with amazing scenery all around it.
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