Rice Reunion in Durango

A post about our trip to Colorado this past August for a "Rice Reunion" (get-together with friends from the Rice CS grad student era).

Saturday: flew out via Southwest to Kansas City, then on to Albuquerque. Full flights but uneventful otherwise. There are those who have had less than positive experiences with Southwest, but I actually thought they did a pretty decent job (at least on the way out). First nice thing: great to be able to check a bag without getting dinged for extra fees. Second nice thing: I actually like the boarding process they use, with the little "runway" where people line up for their boarding slot (much better than the endless pre-boardings and special boardings of other airlines: "Now boarding Platinum Executive Class... Now boarding Diamond Luxury Class ..." on down to regular pond-scum class where we actually get on the plane.

After arriving in ABQ we collected our rental car and drove up north to the very small town of Chimayo outside of Sante Fe, a place where I'd been before years ago when visiting my cousin Seth.  The town features a religious shrine and also a very good Mexican restaurant ("Rancho Di Chimayo"); we stayed in a small Hacienda across the street. The hacienda is on the small side and very old-fashioned -- elderly wood floors (kind of creaky), no air-conditioning, a wood fireplace in each of the rooms, no wi-fi (yay).  We had a couple of good meals at the restaurant (dinner Saturday night and then breakfast Sunday morning). The food is still tasty, very authentic New Mexican style Mexican grub. Amy had the chile relleno, I had the carne adovada, Ethan had fajitas and Lydia had a shrimp enchilada. We also feasted on sopapillas (basically the New Mexican equivalent of fried dough), which the restaurant does amazingly well.

Sunday morning: went for a nice run before breakfast (lots of huffing and puffing due to the altitude, but lovely cool air and nice smells. We piled into the car and headed up north to Durango.  For the car ride we listened to the first disc of "The Great Gatsby" (by popular request) -- kind of an odd thing to be hearing while zooming through the arid New Mexican landscape, but that was what the kids wanted.

For lunch we stopped in Pogosa Springs (Colorado) and collected a couple of bags of tamales, a watermelon, and some peaches from a roadside place, then drove the rest of the way up to Durango. Durango is bigger than I had expected -- sizeable strip along the main freeway, then a pretty lively downtown area. We stopped at a bakery and did a little walking around to stretch our legs.

We located the rental place ("Tall Spruce House"). The house itself is about nine miles north of the main Durango downtown, in the Animas river valley that runs north up to Silverton. It is a pretty quiet/residential area; the house itself is very close to a smallish hot springs resort outfit called the Trimble Spa.

After a brief run-in with Lisa, the person managing the house, we took off to do some grocery shopping.  By the time we were back from the store people had started ti trickle in: Chau-Wen, Don, and eventually the rest of the gang. Amy made a nice dinner with tacos, chicken, cucumber salad, and I made a green salad. The food was consumed in an ongoing fashion throughout the evening, until Reinhard and the gang from Kiel rolled in around 9pm.

Monday: went for a jog in the neighborhood with Reinhard, Lydia, and Nora. We invaded the neighboring golf course and did a smallish loop. 

The morning activity was bicycling: after a fairly lsate start we drove into Durango en masse and rented bikes from "Pedal the Peaks", a bike place downtown. Durango as it turns out has a really nice bike path that runs south from the downtown area along the Animas river for about four or five miles-- very pleasant low-key ride. Pics:

After that we had lunch at a local brewpub (Steamship? something like that) 

After that it was back to hang out at the ranch. Kathi and Luigi cooked dinner: chickpeas, rice, veggies.  Luigi's chickpeas were pretty much devoured (no sign of leftovers); very tasty.

Frisbee game on the lawn (Ethan, Pete, Chau-Wen):

Following dinner we had the obligatory charades game, instigated by Rosana.  She introduced a new twist on the game, which was: in the first round you have to "talk through" each clue (basically describing what the clue is without actually using the words in the clue); in the second round your use the same clues but you have to act each one out (no words), and then in the final round you have to act our the clues (again, the same set) using only sounds (no gestures). It was fun-- definitely a lot speedier than the usual version of the game, since you see the same clues more than once. We then had a short encore round with regular charades for the hard-core contingent.  I think the prize for best charading went to Maya, who was acting out "Guardians of the Galaxy" (she managed to do a near-perfect impression of a racoon, which the audience picked up on immediately, but then could not remember any recent movies featuring racoons).

Tuesday:

This was our day to go see Mesa Verde, which was an interesting expedition. The park is much bigger than I had expected (not quite sure what those expectations were based on, but that is how it seemed). The lapscape in the areas is mostly high grasslands on the top of the mesas with deep canyons cutting through in places. Fair number of visitors, but nowhere near the sorts of numbers you get at parks like Yellowstone or Acadia, so that was nice.  It took about an hour to drive from Durango, so not too terribly much driving.

Mesa Verde is quite sizable, so even after entering the park you have to drive around to get from one site to another (similar to Yellowstone in that respect). We stopped at the visitor center and signed up for tours of the  ancient sites -- first a tour of "Balcony House" and then another tour of "Cliff Palace" at 4:30pm (both ranger-guided). Would have tried for earlier timeslots, but the early tours fill up very quickly.

To have some fun before the tours, we went on a hike on the Petroglyph trail, which starts near the Spruce Tower site within that park. It was a very nice hike, very rocky, up-and-down trail running along about 100 feet below the canyon rim, leading to a small set of petroglyphs on the canyon wall. Luigi + Kathi + Maya came along as part of a second group (they were delayed initially).

How to torture your parents: see how close you can get to the cliff's edge:

Encountered by K + L + M on the trail: sizable snake of some sort. No rattle, and with a non-triangular head, so not a rattlesnake, but not sure about the variety otherwise. Photo by Kathi:

The Balcony House and Cliff Palace tours were very interesting-- we learned a lot about the ancient pueblo peoples and about the area. The terminology has changed in recent years -- the park service used to use the word "Anasazi" to describe the people who lived in the cliff dwellings, but as it turns out "Anasazi" is not actually a Pueblo word but rather a Navajo word, and in fact means "enemy old people" (or something to this effect), big oops. The rangers are now encouraging people to say "Ancient Pueblo Cultures". 

Balcony House is a series of stone dwellings tucked into a hollow about 50 feet below the canyon rim; getting to it requires navigating some very steep stairs and climbing a 30 foot ladder. We got to see the water source for the pueblo -- turns out that one of the reasons they constructed these sites was to deal with a drought that was happening around the 13th century. There was still farming going on at the top of the mesa, but very little water (this is inferred from tree rings and various geological records). The geology of the area meant that water would seep down through the very porous top layers, then get trapped and seep sideways until it leaked out in spots along the canyon walls (hence the desired to build dwellings tucked into the canyon walls).

Pete and Rosana stayed behind (they had already been to Mesa Verde a couple of times), so they were able to cook dinner and provide us with a nice meal when we got back.  We were also treated to cocktails mixed by Ervan, who has not lost his touch with the mixology.

Wed: 

In the morning we collected a group of seven who were hiking-inclined and drove about an hour to the east (near Vallecito) to walk up the Lake Eileen trail. Ervan, Chau-Wen, Than, Amy, Pete, Rosana, Reinhard. Nice weather, not too hot, a bit overcast for the first part. The forecast was for possble rain showers, but we basically ignored it and forged ahead. Hike was about 2 miles each way, leading up to a small lake (really more like a pond) at the top.  The lake was nothing to write home about but the trail itself was good.  We had interesting discussions about politics and such along the way. Amy and Rosana saw a bear on the trail(!) close to the top at the end of the first leg of the hike. For lunch we had sandwiches put together by Amy (roast chicken with green chili sauce, yum).

Out on a hike... soaking in the natural beauty ... no technological distractions... hey! wait a minute-- why is everyone looking at their cell phones?

It was pretty warm on the hike down the mountain, so I took advantage of a stream crossing to dunk my head in the cold water:

The dunk itself:

Ahh, much better.

Got back to the house around 2:30, had a nice shower and then really spent the rest of the afternoon lazing around chatting with the rest of the gang. Lisa Gray and her son Ben rolled in around the same time; Ervan wheeled out his bartender's skillset again, plying us with cocktails (as I recall there was not a whole lot of arm-twisting was required). 

The younger generation:

View from the front porch:

Porch hangout:

Don at work in the kitchen:

Ervan at work bartending:

Don cooked chili and cornbread for dinner (very tasty!); we ate on the early side and then piled into the car to drive down to the Wild Horse Saloon in Durango (egged on by Chau-Wen) where we all took two-step lessons (interestingly, it was not called "Texas Two Step" but just "Two Step"). The web site said that you had to be 18, so we had to leave the younger kids behind, then annoyingly when we got to the joint they told us that it would have been ok to have the the younger ones after all (grr). Chau-Wen has been keeping up his dancing skills, so he wowed us with his dance steps (two-step and other stuff as well).

Maya and Luigi were the only ones brave enough to get up on stage to do karaoke -- they sang "Diamonds on the Soles of My Shoes" by Paul Simon. After that a woman got up and sang "Suds in a Bucket" ... never heard that one before?

Thursday:

Rainy and a bit overcast today, which put a damper on the group activity thing. Kind of a bummer; I had been planning on trying rally a group to do a slightly more strenuous high-altitude hike, but no such luck.

Reinhard and Hildegard worked the phones for a while trying to line up a horse-back riding session; it started out as a 1pm ride, then gradually migrated to 2 and then 3 (the horse place was difficult to pin down). We did eventually pile in the car and head up north to a livery place across from one of the local ski areas (Durango Mountain Resorts).  When we made our appearance, the folks running the show said that they only had six horses after all (grumble), so we put most of the gang (Reinhard, his kids, Ervan, and our two kids) on the horses and the rest of us (Amy, myself, and Hildegard) went off to explore for a bit during the ride. I did a short hike at the ski area across the street (got about 2/3 of the way up one of the steeper slopes, then headed back down). Photo:

Amy and Hildegard zoomed off in the car to find a place to have tea.

Photos from the riding (shot by Ervan):

For dinner Chau-Wen fired up the grill and prepared an enormous meal for us, with steak, chicken, salmon, mushrooms, asparagus, corn, and all sorts of other goodies. 

After dinner we had a very entertaining session of the game "Telestrations", or something like it (we just used pencil and paper, since we didn't have the actual boxed game on hand to use). It was hilarious -- we had some amazing verbal/pictorial transformations. It turned out to be a good game to place with a mixed-nationality group (Julia and Nora enjoyed it). 

Friday: more rain! It was really bucketing in the morning, so the tentative plans for kayaking / mountain-biking pretty much went out the window. 

We had originally planned to have a contingent of folks heading up to Silverton and then taking the train back in the afternoon, but the numbers were eventually whittled down given that it was so rainy, and we eventually settled on Reinhard + Hildegard + kids, plus Lydia and Ethan and I.

Reinhard had managed to track down a decent rainy-day activity in Silverton, a tour of an old gold mine in a valley off to the side from the main part of Silverton. The drive north from Durango takes about an hour, very mountainous with a lot of steep sections and sharp turns.

The mine tour was more interesting than I thought it would be. This particular site was first active in the 19th century; the initial shafts were very high up (Silverton is at about 9300 feet, and the highest mine sites are at almost 12000 feet). [[ This actually meshes well with my recollections from the last time I was hiking in this area, when we did a multi-day trip starting at the West Elk trailhead... I remember stumbling across a couple of old wrecked mining sites at seemingly impossibly high altitudes. ]].

Later on in the 20th century they added more tunnels and access shafts at a lower level, so we didn't have to drive very high up to reach the site. As part of a big group (couple dozen) we piled into two long, low rail cars and then zoomed right into a horizontal shaft around 1/3 of a mile into the mountain. Very drippy, walls very close to the sides of the rail car, pretty claustrophobic. Eventually it widened out just a bit and led into a lighted area, where we got out and looked at the exhibits they had set up there. The guy running the tour was a former miner, old and gray and grizzled; he did a good job talking about the history of the mine and how the equipment developed over time.

He showed us some of the original hand drills (basically just pieces of metal the miners banged into the rock), then the compressed-air driven drills developed in the 19th century, and described the evolution of the other tools (lamps, elevators, excavators, etc) that took place as the technology improved. The drills in particular evolved at a very rapid pace towards the end of the 20th century, as did the techniques for blasting once the holes were in place. 

Photos:

For lunch we found a pizza place in Silverton, then did some window shopping in the town afterwards (Silverton has a large supply of very touristy shops to visit). Reinhard and I walked over to where the Silverton/Durango train was getting loaded up and ready to go -- it was cool to look at the engine (mean-looking beast) and talk with the engineer. The engineer told us that the ride one way (45 miles) consumes six and a half tons of coal, yikes.  I also went over and snuck into the local marijuana shop, just to see what it looked like inside (visitors are immediately asked for ID, no matter what they look like). First time I had ever seen marijuana chewing gum before (brand "ChewBunga", I believe). The Silverton main drag:

We got back in time for a couple of very spirited ping-pong games, which was fun, and I was able to get in a run before dinner, cooked by Reinhard and Hildegard.

More random photos: Hildegard + Reinhard + Julia + Nora:

Kids working on their insanely difficult jigsaw puzzle:

A couple of disreputable characters:

Dinner:

In the evening we watched some of the Olympic Games opening ceremonies coverage, and then had another round of our telestrations game before bed. 

Saturday: we packed up around 8, said our goodbyes, and hopped in the car to do the long haul down to Albuquerque.  Lengthy drive, fairly uneventful. Once we started to get closer to Albuquerque Amy fired up her cell phone and discovered that our flight had been delayed (equipment problems), meaning that we could not make our connection. This led to some negotiations over the phone to get ourselves rebooked. With some quick talking she managed to get me and the kids rebooked on a later flight through Denver, then she found a flight for herself through Chicago that would put her in to Boston about and hour after we landed.  So we did finally make it back on the same day, albeit with some extra hassle and struggle.

Anyhow, it was a really nice trip -- great to catch up with the Rice gang.