Cumbres & Toltec Railroad

We hadn't planned on riding the narrow gauge Cumbres & Toltec train, but it was close and we love riding trains!

I called and reserved tickets for today.  We arrived at the station in Chama to begin our ride at 10:00

The train pulled up and we loaded onto it.

Once our tickets were checked, we were able to move anywhere on the train.  We moved to the open air gondola car in the back.  You could see the full view as well as smell the pine trees.  It was awesome!

We began our trip through the fields with the mountains just behind.

We were moving along when all of a sudden the train slowed down and there was a loud metal clanking noise.  We weren't' sure what it was.  The nice thing about being in the open air car was the docent who was onboard was there as well.

He told us that the last few days, the caterpillars in the aspen have been so bad that they fall on the tracks and it stops the wheels from making contact with the tracks.  Some of the crew had to get off the train and sweep the tracks to get through.  We got a closeup of these nasty critters.  They have stripped the leaves off many of the aspen in the area.

Finally, we were on our way again.  We came to this mountain and we could see the track going around it. 

There was lots of pretty scenery.

a high trestle,

and an elk.

There were even fisherman.

About 12:30, we arrived at the halfway point of Osier and were greeted by all the waitstaff there.  We unloaded from the train and enjoyed a wonderful turkey dinner and dessert which was included in the ticket price.

We got back on the train at 1:40 to continue our journey.

There was a long, rock tunnel,

a canyon,

and more views along the edge of the mountain.

We began getting close to our final destination and the mountain views began to disappear.  It was big, wide open spaces with mountains in the background.

We reached our destination, Antonito, Colorado.

There, we boarded a bus to take us back to Chama, New Mexico.  We really enjoyed this trip.  We have been on the Durango-Silverton train which was wonderful.  This train, however, was not as crowded and things were much more laid back.  We really enjoyed being able to go back and forth on the open car.  I enjoyed just going out and standing outside on the front of our train car.  The tickets are a little pricey, but it does last all day and there was a scrumptious meal included.  It was a wonderful day!