Day 23

Wake up early and board the train from Durango to Silverton.  It’s a 100+-year-old narrow gauge steam locomotive.  We were all very excited, especially Lincoln and myself.  He has a nice train set and we have always talked about riding one.  It was quite the experience.  Being a narrow gauge it tends to rock back and forth consistently.  We were headed up the mountain to Silverton which still looks like it did in 1900.  Three and half hour trip up.  The kids started falling asleep and Diane and I were getting on them about not being able to see this stuff at home, and you should have gone to bed earlier.  About 45 minutes into the trip, the rocking, and the smell of the coal, and the warm air, it was all I could do to stay awake.  I looked up at Diane and she was mouth open sleeping like a dead guy.  We both eventually woke and were laughing that is was impossible to stay awake.  The scenery was gorgeous, and a bit terrifying when we were looking down sheer cliffs knowing that it was over 100 years when they put down these tracks.   We got a bus ride back to Durango and prepared for our white water rafting for the afternoon.  We have gone before in West Virgina, so we were pumped.   When waiting in line, there was a little bit bigger lady that had on a bikini that would be tight on Laney or London.  She jumped on our bus to the river and I knew she would be in my boat.  When got to the river and the instructor called out names for boat assignments.  Reiss was called first and we all jumped up.  Next, he yelled “Santos” and sure enough, “you’re with Reiss”.  I whispered to Diane, “good Lord, I am going to have to save her I know it.”  When loading the boat I ran to the front, I did not want that missing bikini butt in my face the entire time.  So we were off.  I looked at the other boats and each one had about 4 grown men onboard, ours was my family and the Santos sisters.  About 5 minutes in she dropped her oar and I had to row to it while Linc reached out to get it.   At one point she said, “we can do anything, we have Dad on board.”   Turned out she was fine and actually very nice.  The best part was after some pretty good rapids, we had a break, she stood up and said, “OMG my suit is all the way up in my crack”.  Needless to say, I stared forward in horror while Linc watched her without blinking.  After that, we were back to Hotel room for food and swimming.  The following day was almost all travel.  We made it to Texas for the night and stayed in a campground.  Today we put down some more miles.  We visited Cadillac Ranch and the kids got to tag the cars with spray paint.  We stopped at a huge cross for a visit and eventually made our way to the Soda-Pop Ranch.  Hundreds of different flavors of soda.  The kids were in heaven.

After that, we drove to a Jellystone Park on Keystone Lake, in Oklahoma.  We will be here for 2 night so the kids can get a full day of swimming in the lake on all the blow-up jumpy things.  It’s been a great trip so far and I am sad it is winding down.  Not as many pictures this time because we did not take phones with us while rafting.