Day Thirty-One, Ten-Oh-Seven PM

Is it the sun or the safety yellow making him squint?

SATURDAY WAS THE come-down day. We had traveled thousands of miles (at least a thousand anyway) to pay respects to the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge RR, and now it was over. We woke up lazily and went looking for breakfast burritos. John's craving hadn't subsided.

A few wrong names and directions later, we settled on a decent Mexican joint called Nyarit. Not a bad choice after all. Breakfast / lunch accomplished we set out to climb over Molas pass on US-550 and wander about northeast of Silverton.

Dan on the drill. Drill, Dan, Drill.

We had seen in the ubiquitous pamphlets at every hotel a working mine exhibit called "Old Hundred". Maybe I should be more clear: the mine made more money for the construction workers than the owners. Not much ore was pulled out, but they built such an impressive facility it made an easy switch to running tours with working machinery. As for a "working" mine, it hadn't been mined since the 1970's.

Your very own Old Hundred tour. In 13 seconds.

Our guide Dan was a 17 year veteran miner of the San Juan Mountains. He knew all the gear in the mine, and how it worked. Less interested in the inner working of the compressed air rock drill, I wanted to sit down with Dan and pepper him with questions of what it was like to work 10, 12 hours underground. But I didn't have the chance.

Paydirt!

The tour was fascinating, but quick. We wandered back into the daylight and tried our hands at gold panning from the trough out front. Salted heavily with silver pellets, it wasn't hard to feel like an old hand. We became so engrossed that one of us managed to expel air from his derriere. We'll mention no names but I'm pretty Sure the people panning Just to our right know who iT was.

Panning for solder pellets is fun.

Finally we quit the Old Hundred and headed back towards town. At the juncture in the road we took one last drive northeasterly. A Porcupine stopped the car (John wanted to shoot a photo) and we all tumbled out near a stream. The water drew our attention, and Scott cast the first stones. First hundred probably. As the sun slipped behind the ridge, we worked feverishly at damming the creek.

Dambuilders.

The creek won out, aided by the sun. It was getting late. We turned around for Durango, and eventually, home. The trip was coming to an end.

-F