Silverton – Riveted

Silver Falls State Park, Spot 10

Laura Domela — Mon, 23 Jun 2014 12:56:38 +0000

Our short visit here at Silver Falls State Park has been so nice! We'll be working right here this morning until we check out and head home for a few days. We've got 4 bars of strong AT&T, and no Verizon, for those of you curious about that. The closest place to get reliable Verizon seems to be back near the town of Silverton (14 miles or so from here).

Last night we had another campfire and visited with the Hardersens over at their campsite (where we were most definitely loud past 10pm…ooops). Dinner was zucchini cooked on the Traeger and caprese panini (and Prosecco with no Aperol).

ATVing in the San Juan Mountains

Laura Domela — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 18:56:33 +0000

Airstream in the early morning light

We got up early this morning and headed downtown to meet up with our ATVs and our guide, Larry, at San Juan Backcountry. We highly recommend this place. The owners (Jessica and Larry) are awesome and we had SUCH a great time. Definitely will be doing this again next time we're in town (and probably sooner, in another town!). We had some breakfast next door at the Brown Bear Cafe, then went back to get outfitted with helmets, goggles, and gloves. We headed out from the staging area near the campground where we're staying. Streams, mountains, mines, alpine lakes, a couple of marmots, and here are a whole bunch of shots from along the way:

Here's the GPS track of our ride:

The stats (which aren't quite accurate, because Kevin started the GPS after about 9 miles in…so we went more like 27 miles total). Look at that max altitude!

And here's a link to the interactive map.

I think we should do MUCH MUCH more of this. It was such a blast. (But first, my throttle thumb muscles need to get a little stronger.)

Brass Band, Beer, and Burgers

Laura Domela — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 17:38:38 +0000

Last night we went to the 31st Annual Great Western Rocky Mountain Brass Band Festival in Silverton, CO. It was a blast. All of the musicians dressed in period outfits and played a variety of Sousa marches and other band standards.

This is Dennis Kurtz (below). He plays xylophone, and he tap dances (both separate from and while he's playing the xylophone). We heard that he's also the town plumber and that his wife used to be and may still be the mayor of Silverton.

The concert started at 7pm and was over around 9:30pm. We didn't have dinner before the show so we thought we'd see if anything was still open in town. Hah.

The Silverton Brewery looked to be open so we thought we'd just see if by chance they might have some food in addition to beer. We parked and walked up to the front door and asked if they were open (there was only one table with a couple people at it) and whether they still had food. The guy working there said they didn't, and walked out front with us to see if he could see/think of any places in town that might still be open with food. Then, he said "Y'know what? If you don't mind waiting a few minutes, I'll just fire up the grill and cook you something here. Come on in." He said no, he didn't mind at all, so we went took him up on his really nice offer.

We sat at the bar and had a beer and he made us some chili and burgers and fries and everything was great. After a few minutes, several more people wandered in and ordered some food as well, so I think it ended up worth the double cleaning on the grill. We left him a good tip to help.

Around Silverton

Laura Domela — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 21:08:03 +0000

We went in and walked around downtown Silverton this afternoon. Lots of little touristy shops and old buildings.

I stocked up on some cool rock jewelry — a turquoise pendant on an 18" cord:

An agate ring:

And another pendant to put on the same cord — I can't remember what the guy said this purple stuff was, but it's cool and hard to capture in a photo:

The guy in the gem shop gave us a couple of tips, and one of them we're going to follow on Saturday evening: Montagne Distillers in Silverton — a craft distiller of award-winning rum made from scratch by hand. Saturday evening they have live music and rum drinks and tapas, and they have a rooftop bar. We're there!

After exploring town a bit, we drove up to the Hillside Cemetery and looked around. We didn't do the full tombstone exploration mission we plan to, just a quick pass this time:

Here's a shot from the cemetery that gives you the whole picture of things:

Driving from Ouray to Silverton

Laura Domela — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 17:32:51 +0000

We made it. In case you were worried.

Here are some pics:

Okay and somewhere up way way way WAY up on the side of a cliff, I noticed a little cabin (or maybe two small structures). Here's the overall pic (tiny brown dot in the middle)…

And here's the fully zoomed in pic (click to enlarge):

Wonder how anyone would get up there!

We stopped and took a picture at the Red Mountain Pass summit (11,018 feet):

Here's the view from our new campsite (a mine off in the distance):

Behind us is the Hillside Cemetery which we fully plan to explore.

And now, more work!

Silverton, Outlaw Steaks, Dirt Bikes, and Wally Dallenbach

Laura Domela — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 01:59:36 +0000

I don't even know where to start. After work today we decided to drive just the truck from Ouray to Silverton (along the winding, twisty, Milion Dollar Highway, steep drop offs, hairy) to check out the campsite we thought we might head to tomorrow (the free, park wherever spot we stayed in before — Mineral "Campground" right outside of Silverton). The drive was gorgeous.

Heading up and out of Ouray

Mineral Campground was just as we remembered it, but really full and since we'd be arriving on a Thursday before a weekend, we figured we'd check out the Silverton Lakes Campground right in Silverton. Turns out, it was a winner and we booked a spot with a great view (a mine on one side, a graveyard on the hill on the other side, and walking distance to town) for the next three nights.

We thought we'd drive a little further on I-550 and check out Molas Lake Campground as well. Whoa. We NEED to come back here. There's this view, from the day use area:

We noticed these signs and thought we'd go check (for maybe, a couple weeks from now) whether there were any sites we could fit in.

We talked to John, and he told us we could fit in the "Ultra RV Spots", up on the ridge (there are four of them). This is John. (He's been in Silverton 20 years):

And this is the view from the "Ultra RV Spots" up on the ridge. Duuuuude.

We drove up there to check out whether we had any kind of service or not. We both had one bar of 4G AT&T but neither of us could check email with that. We showed no Verizon, and Sprint showed a data connection but we never actually verified that with real data coming in…so as of now, it's gonna have to be a weekend destination.

Downtown Silverton

We'll be in Silverton tomorow through Saturday or Sunday. We're excited that we'll be there for the Great American Brass Band Festival, too!

Okay so, we got back to Ouray around 7:30pm and we decided we wanted to go out to eat instead of cooking, so we ended up at the Outlaw Restaurant (legendary home of John Wayne's hat!!!) This place…well…it was PERFECT. There was a piano player (in a cowboy hat and a suede fringe vest) playing saloon standards, and the vibe overall was just what you'd hope for your last night in Ouray. Good bar, good food, good music.

But, just when we thought it couldn't get any better, it got a little better. Several dirt bike guys started showing up (we could tell by the shirts) and then, a guy rode a dirt bike right into the restaurant between the bar and the dinner tables, yelling something we couldn't quite hear over the revving of the dirt bike engine, but he was psyched.

Another dirt bike guy walked past our table a bit later with a beer in his hand and I asked him if he could tell us what the deal was with the dirt bike thing tonight. He (Steve) was perfectly buzzed and the ideal person to ask, it turns out, because he was super chatty and we got a bunch of information. Steve told us all about the ride they were doing (the invitational Colorado 500, kind of a big deal), about his history with dirt bike racing (he started when he was a kid, raced most of his life, put it on hold while he was married, got divorced and started racing again, and had ridden 400 miles in this race so far). We also learned from Steve that the man over at the bar with the cool black-rimmed glasses (a guy Kevin and I had noticed earlier) was the guy who'd started the Colorado 500, Wally Dallenbach (legendary long-time Indy car driver who drove in 180 Indy Car races between 1965 and 1979, winning five times).

When we left, we stopped and chatted with Wally for a few minutes and he was super cool. (We met the owner of the Outlaw Restaurant too…also very nice.) What a fun evening!

Portland to Denver

Laura Domela — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 21:08:29 +0000

We're heading out for Alumafandango pretty soon (maybe this weekend) and so far I've got a rough plan for our route to Denver. We plan to take a fastish route to get to Colorado so we can spend a few days in and around Silverton and Ouray (and the Million Dollar Highway!) before we need to be in Denver. We did this trip with our first Airstream and are excited to do it again (with a blog!).

I see we'll be missing the Hardrockers Holidays (it's this weekend). We happened to be in Silverton during Hardrockers Holidays one time before and it was a blast. However, it looks like we might make the Great Western Rocky Mountain Brass Band Festival the following weekend. Perfect!

Any spots along the way or in the vicinity that you recommend we don't miss? Our rough plan after Denver includes (so far) Mueller State Park and Leadville. We don't have anything more than that planned yet.

Dinner at the Silver Grille in Silverton, OR

Laura Domela — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 14:52:42 +0000

We drove into Silverton last night for our anniversary dinner. We'd talked ahead of time to the chef, Jeff Nizlek, and he said he had a large party of 20 coming in and that they were fun but that they might be loud. He said he'd be happy to have us, could seat us on the other side of the room from the loud party (no big deal, really), and even agreed to make a special tasting menu with wine pairings just for us (yay!). The large party turned out not to be very loud at all, and we had a wonderful evening.

Our menu (with a couple of slight modifications along the way, but this is pretty close):

That gorgonzola bruschetta!! Yum!

And here's a list of the wines we had:

Everything was very good, but my favorite course was the goat cheese cavatelli with lamb ragout. It was amazing, and we're told it's usually on the regular menu.

The sous vide sirloin with garlic mashed potatoes and was also delicious, but I forgot to take a photo until it was gone:

Desserts were both great, but the creme brulee was one of the best we've had. It was served in a shallow dish, so the ratio of crunchy sugar on top to the creamy vanilla custard was just about perfect.

We will definitely be back here. Our only tiny "nit" was that the courses came a little too fast. It could easily have been due to the party of 20 on the other side of the room (it's not a big place)…with that many courses and wine pairings, sometimes the next wine was arriving before the other was gone, and the next course soon followed…it was all so good but consequently we ate a bit faster than we would have normally. Other than that, no complaints. Service was good, atmosphere was nice, and the food was excellent. Thanks guys!

Visit the Silver Grille here.

(Posted by Laura)