Day 8 July 12
This morning I woke from a deep sleep to the what I thought was Steve’s alarm ringing at 5:18 am. It stopped and I fell back to sleep. When I got up at 6:30 I looked at my phone and saw that it was actually my phone ringing and it was Pet Fusion, where I board my cats. My little cat, Mini was sick and throwing up blood. They took her to an emergency vet where after speaking to the vet, I determined to put her down. It was a hard decision, but I wasn’t willing to pay $1400 to find out what was wrong with her. She was about 14, so she’d had a good life, but I was still sad and know I will miss her.
We left Durango still early in the morning when it was cool and started our climb up the mountain to Silverton. The drive went well even at the highest elevation of 10904 ft. and the traffic was fairly light. When cars got backed up behind us there were turn offs on the side of the road for us to let them pass and cars did pass as we chugged up at 25 mph. A lot of vehicles that passed us were trailering a RZR or also known as a OHV, (off highway vehicle).
This morning there was a haze on the mountains that I thought was fog, but as the morning progressed the haze never cleared. Later I found out it’s smoke from the fires burning in AZ and CA.
Near Silverton there was a scenic overlook that we decided to stop at. When we got out of the car a couple came up to us and said they belonged to a Triumph car club from Washington State. They had seen us on the road and applauded us for driving in the mountains in our “A”. The people in their club whine about driving anywhere out of Seattle and certainly not the mountains! I guess to their defense, Triumphs weren’t built for hot and dry weather, so they do have problems. Then at the same rest stop another couple came up and told us about the “31 A they own, but they don’t drive any distance with it. He said his wife would never do it and he’s not very mechanical.
When we arrived in Silverton around 10am, the town was filled with cars and traffic was terrible, especially for a small town. A lot of the traffic was due to the OHV’s. They were everywhere and I thought there must be a rally of some sort. I was told by a local that Silverton is one of the few towns that let OHV’s drive in them. They also come here because there are 8 mountain passes that they can travel on, so all summer long they are here tearing up the mountains!
We had all day to spend in Silverton, which made it a long day for Steve. Even I, the super shopper, had seen all I wanted to by noon, so after lunch we looked around to see what else we could do. One thing was to ride around the town in a stage coach, so we road for all of 10 minutes.
Then we heard about the cemetery on the mountainside. Ordinarily this isn’t something we’d do, but we had heard the tombstones were old and very interesting. Unlike most cemeteries I’ve visited this one did not have nice manicured lawns and the graves were not well taken care of. Instead, it was full of weeds and long grass, even on the graves. What made this cemetery really unique were the headstones and their epitaph. Recently some of the headstones were redone and made flat like you’d see in any graveyard, but the epitaph was original. Most graves we saw were from the 1800’s and the people had died young 27 - 40. The headstones read the person’s name, relationship (wife, son etc.) birth and death date and cause of death. Some had died of gun shot wounds, suicide, dropsy of the heart, the flu and most tragic was a little girl of 2 that fell into a boiling tub of water. I suppose “enjoy” is the wrong word, but I did enjoy my visit there and found it fascinating.
The last thing we did before retiring to our B & B was visit with the owner of the restaurant, Natalie’s. We were able to park our Model A next to his and take pictures, all the while he and Steve talked about their cars.
Wherever the car is people stop and ask questions and that’s what makes the trip worthwhile for Steve.
Tomorrow is the drive on the Red Mountain Pass with an elevation of 11,017 ft! No guardrails on this road and the speed limit is 25mph for modern cars. I hope our car can keep up doing at least 15 mph!! This might be scary! Again wish us luck and say a prayer! Thanks!
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