Friday, June 29th - Mine Tour

We drove down to Ouray, Colorado to the Batchelor-Syracuse Mine. They conduct tours of the dormant silver and gold mine every hour, on the hour. The attraction employs "work campers" to staff the kitchen and conduct the tours. We ate a breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, potatos, toast and coffee while waiting for the 11:00 tour

The tour was cool - literally - 50 degrees and damp. We met four delightful ladies, Rosemarie, Raye, Eileen and Jean who took the same tour with us. We all boarded the battery powered tram car for the 1,800 feet trip deep into the mountain. The guide did a show & tell of the various techniques for opening up the mine shafts and extracting the ore.

Afterwards, we drove thru the town of Ouray. Then we drove 24 miles south, on the Million Dollar Highway, US-550, to Silverton, Colorado. We got there in time to see the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad arrive into Silverton.

See video of D&S arriving

We got back to the coach around 3:30 and MA started preparing her famous Gumbo recipe for us and Ron & Carole (a couple we met here in Montrose who are from Shreveport, Louisiana) and Peg & Wayne King, owners of this RV park. As usual, MA's gumbo was quite the hit.