I love my yankee doodle sweetheart

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY SWEET ROD!!

Some of you know Rod's birthday is the 4th of July...and so is his dad's. We decided to celebrate by going to Durango, CO to ride the steam train. It was a short trip (arrived Fri. 7/3 night late and got back Sun. 7/5 night), but it was SO much fun!! It really is one of my favorite trips.

Get ready for picture overload...

Train depot before departure

Departure time: 8:15am
ALL ABOARD!

Tickets Please...He came around and punched each of our tickets like in The Polar Express.This dog ran along with the train for about a half mile. It was so funny - he was seriously almost as fast as the train.Beautiful surroundingsBlowing off some steam, high above the river. Arriving in Sliverton, CO at about 11:30am

Interesting people greeted us at the train depot. Silverton is an "old west" type of town with old time saloons and other old west decor.
They had a parade before we got there to celebrate the 4th.

We ate at Grumpy's. It was decorated like an old saloon and they had someone playing an old player-type piano. We got stuck in a side room since it was so crowded though, so we couldn't really enjoy the atmosphere. The food was pretty good - I had a french dip and Rod had a BBQ pork sandwich.

They really were selling chocolate covered insects but no thanks - we didn't eat any.

Back to the train depot to return to Durango after about 2 hours in Silverton.

This mountain is said to look like the back of King Kong's head. It actually does!

We arrived back in Durango at about 5:15pm. The train ride was so much fun! We were covered with soot from the coal smoke and it was a bit of a rocky ride, but worth every minute.

The night of the 4th we celebrated Rod's birthday - he opened his presents and we watched giant fireworks from a grassy area right next to our hotel. I didn't take any pictures of the fireworks but they were great!

The next day we visited the train museum

I'm not usually someone who buys shirts wherever we go, but I had to get this one. First of all, it's pink and it has sparkles on it. Yes, I'm 12. It has a picture of the train and says Durango.
After the museum we looked around Durango a little bit.

It was a cute town but we didn't have much time since we had one more stop before officially heading back the 7 hour drive home.

Out to Honeyville

Along the train ride they had signs for Honeyville to see the bees make honey. They sucked me in. I pictured seeing a bunch of outdoor hives and all kinds of interesting things.

It was 10 miles outside of Durango, the opposite direction from home. Instead of anything really exciting though, it was just a little gift shop full of flavored honey...and a plastic thing you could watch a few bees in the hive.

We did, however, get a free 5 oz. honey to take home with us because of a flyer we had, so we got to leave with a little something sweet.

We wished we had at least another day to explore, but it was such a fun trip and a great way to celebrate Rod's birthday!!

Here are a couple train videos so you can experience it a little too...
Gotta love that train whistle (although we only got a second of it)

Blowing off a little steam