How exciting is this that we are going on a steam train journey into the mountains? We’ve never been on one of these old-fashioned narrow-gauge relics from the past, but we are thrilled about being here and listening to this sound out of history.

Not only is the track very narrow compared to normal train tracks, but the path we are traveling next to the Animas River is pretty treacherous in my eyes. There was one spot on a tall cliffside where it felt like the shelf that had been cut into the rocks wasn’t much more than about 10 feet wide. If that wasn’t bad enough, as the rest of the passengers realized the view, they all rushed over to our side of the train. In an instant, I could see our slow-moving train teetering into the rushing water over 100 feet below. While the soot from the coal-burning steam engines is drifting all around us, it’s a small price to pay to be out here in the cattle car, having an unobstructed view of this beautiful landscape.

Our destination is the old mining town of Silverton, and we’ll be here long enough to have lunch. While some passengers opt to go back to Durango via a bus on the windy road, we have to take in every precious moment of the experience and will plod along on the train back down the mountain.

It took me six years after this first visit before I brought my daughter Jessica back this way for a father-daughter adventure, and the year after that, in 2005, we brought my mother-in-law, Jutta, up for a train ride into the mountains. Back on this first visit, another passenger asked us if we’d taken the Cumbres & Toltec that runs between Antonito, Colorado, and Chama, New Mexico; we had not. That tip would take us 11 years until in 2009 over the 4th of July long weekend to finally get scheduled, and then we had to ask, “Why’d this take so long?”

No, I’m not on the caboose bringing up the rear, but I am dangerously hanging out the train so Caroline can snap a photo of me. By the time this long day came to an end at our hotel, I don’t think any of us could believe how much coal soot was being washed away. One other thing, with this trip we have fallen in love with the San Juan mountain range.