June 4-6, 2013
Sorry for the infrequent blogging the past several days.
We’ve been busy, part of the time fishing/camping in areas with no cell signal,
so we’ve gotten behind. It’s catch-up time…
On Tuesday we mostly hung around Julie’s house working on
our computers, doing some much-needed laundry, and cooking, while Julie went
into Durango to do some work at her radio station (where she works as an
announcer), and get ready for her vacation. In the afternoon Jack and I walked to
town (Ignacio), about a mile, and looked around the town a little and
replenished our groceries. It’s a tiny little town, about the size of New
Castle back home. The people seem very friendly. I made some guacamole and
chicken veggie stew in Julie’s crockpot for supper, and we all ate out on her
deck when she got home. Nice relaxing day for Jack and me, at least—not so much
for Julie, after a busy day at work and she still has to pack!
On Wednesday morning I take Julie to the Durango airport
(which is only about 15 minutes from her house) in her little SmartCar
convertible. Crazy looking little car, but fun to drive!
 |
Julie's SmartCar and motorcycle with our RoadTrek |
After dropping her
off, I find my way back to her house without any mishaps, and Jack and I eat breakfast
out on the deck and begin to discuss our plans for the coming week, as Jack
wants to fit in a number of fishing rivers over the next few days. My cell
phone rings, and it’s Julie. She missed her plane. For some reason, there were
an inordinately large number of people flying out of Durango this morning and
she didn’t make it through the security line in time. (And she wasn’t the only
one.) She was dumbfounded by this, as she’d never had to wait in line there
longer than 10 or 15 minutes in all her years of flying from this airport! She
wasn’t able to arrange another flight that would make her connection in Denver,
so she rescheduled for the following day. I head back out to the airport to
pick her up.
After arriving back at her house, we decide to all go
into Durango for the afternoon. Jack and I want to ride the famous Durango
& Silverton Narrow Gauge steam train on Saturday, so we need to see what
availability is and purchase our tickets. Plus he wants to visit a fly shop to
get advice on how the rivers are fishing and which flies are working best. In Durango,
we were able to get our tickets for Saturday for the car we wanted (observation
car), and he gets some fishing advice and flies at two different fly shops in
town. He was afraid that the rivers might still be running too high to fish,
but looks like fishing conditions might be OK—even great in some of the rivers!
 |
Purchasing tickets on the Durango to Silverton narrow-gauge steam train at the vintage train depot |
(For some reason, we keep seeing the word “Epic” in
Durango everywhere we go—the town is obviously supporting us in our Epic
journey and blog!)
 |
| Carol and Jack at the Durango Visitor's Center |
We meet Julie’s friend Yolanda (“Yogi”) at the town Welcome
Center—Julie wanted us to meet because Yogi is a native Spanish speaker and she
thought it would be good practice for me to talk to her. Yogi is lots of fun
and we start speaking Spanish immediately—it is great practice and soon I feel
more comfortable communicating in Spanish. (I need to find more people back
home to speak Spanish with.)
Some other friends of Julie and Yogi are meeting for a “Happy
Hour supper” at a nearby Mexican restaurant, so we all join them. The group
includes a retired couple, John and Shirley, and it turns out they are originally
from the Roanoke, Virginia area (she grew up in Floyd), so we have lots to talk
about. After supper, Julie takes us on a scenic route back home; we climb up
into the mountains and see a lake where she used to work—very beautiful.
On Thursday morning, we get up and try once more to get
Julie to her flight on time. (This time, she makes it!) When I get back, Jack
and I discuss our plans again and we decide to head up to the town of Dolores,
so Jack can fish one of the rivers on his Top 100 Trout Rivers of the U.S., the
Dolores River. It’s about a 2-hour drive from here, and we decide to take the
van, since we may want to camp if he ends up fishing late.
We find our way to Dolores and the Dolores River. In the
little town, the river looks to be running fairly high. We find a park where
fishing is allowed and Jack puts on his waders and gets his fly rod ready. He
fishes for a while but doesn’t get any strikes or even a nibble. He decides to
move to a different area so we drive away from the town and look for another
public fishing access. We find a likely looking spot in a remote area, but
again, no strikes. The fish just don’t seem to be feeding this evening.
 |
| Jack fishing the Dolores River above the dam. |
We are fishing the river above a big dam and reservoir.
The trout fishing community is up in arms because the water level in the
reservoir is low and the dam operators aren’t releasing enough water from the
dam to support a healthy trout population in the river below the dam (which
used to be a fabulous trout river). Even though they’re “mandated” to release a
minimum flow that supposedly will at least keep the trout alive, they’re not
doing it. Jack decides to try to fish the river below the dam anyway, to see
how it looks. It’s a long drive and takes us getting lost a couple of times on
gravel back roads, but we finally find a river access
spot about 12 miles below the dam. Indeed, there is very little water and no
fish are biting here either.
 |
Jack fishing the Dolores River below the dam. The river is hardly flowing as water is taken out of the reservoir for irrigation. |
It’s starting to get dark, so we huddle and make a
new plan—we will stay the night at one of the several RV campgrounds we saw in
Dolores, and Jack will try his luck at a different spot in the morning. So that’s what we do: we find a nice-looking campground
with cabins and RVs right on the river just outside of town. I make us some
quick soup for supper and we call it an early night.
On Friday morning we get up and Jack puts on his waders
and goes out to check out the river. The river is still running pretty high
here, but a man and his young son are flyfishing and Jack talks to them for
awhile. The boy is just going into fourth grade and he seems to be as much into
flyfishing as his father. He gives Jack some advice on which fly to use! Nice
to see the younger generation getting into the sport…
The campground has good access to the river and Jack
starts fishing at a few spots. This time he is successful: he catches 3 trout
(browns) and hooks another that gets away. Certainly enough to check off this
river on his list! He climbs out of the river around noon and we pack up,
stopping at a little restaurant on the main drag for an elk burger. Tasty.
On the way back home, we stop at the Animas River, which
is a Gold Medal trout river on Jack’s list that is right in the town of
Durango. It is also running fairly high but Jack throws a line in, just to see.
 |
Jack checking out the Animas River. Water is high. |
There are lots of caddis flies coming off but the fish aren’t taking Jack’s
flies. He tries several different patterns of flies but nothing seems to
interest the trout. Maybe they just aren’t hungry right now, with all the real
flies in the water. He decides to save this river for another day next week. We
arrive back at Julie’s house around 6 pm (stopped for an ice cream cone
first—we better eat salad for supper); Jack is now snoozing while I work on the
blog!
Bird species count:
Vermilion flycatcher, turkey vulture,
Bell’s vireo, *golden-fronted woodpecker, Say’s phoebe, northern cardinal,
greater roadrunner, house finch, common raven, *northern rough-winged swallow, *summer
tanager, *prothonotary warbler, *yellow-breasted chat, *yellow-rumped warbler,
northern mockingbird, mourning dove, cliff swallow, Mexican jay, black-headed
grosbeak, black-chinned hummingbird,
Wilson’s warbler, *Scott’s oriole, chipping sparrow, house sparrow, lesser
goldfinch, black-crested titmouse, acorn woodpecker, scrub jay, *western
kingbird, white-winged dove, *canyon towhee, *Grace’s warbler, *zone-tailed
hawk, *curve-billed thrasher, Bullock’s oriole, Gambel’s quail, great horned
owl, black-throated sparrow, *cactus wren, ladder-backed woodpecker,
white-crowned sparrow, brownheaded cowbird, Brewer’s blackbird, *pyrrhuloxia,
hooded oriole, verdin, crow, Anna’s hummingbird, dark-eyed junco,
white-throated swift, Steller’s jay, mallard, common egret, brown pelican,
western bluebird, loggerhead shrike, Audubon’s warbler, robin, Canada goose,
black-billed magpie, red-winged blackbird, redtailed hawk
State count: 14 [Virginia, North Carolina, South
Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona,
California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado]
Odometer count:
Surber, VA: 107,435
Durango, CO: 114,004
Accommodations cost:
60 nights, average $13.39/night
No comments:
Post a Comment