We just completed a trip to Europe where we spent 77 nights in 16 different locations and we used trains as our primary means of travel. We rented a car for 9 days in Germany and took a flight from Barcelona to Geneva. Otherwise, we used trains to get from place to place. The trains were fast and reliable. Continue reading
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Heading south from Montrose, the most direct route to reach Durango is US Highway 550. The road is a part of what is called the “San Juan Skyway”, as it travels through the San Juan Mountain range of southwestern Colorado. In particular, the portion of this highway between Ouray and Silverton is known as the “Million Dollar Highway”. This road is hung on the face of the mountain and has narrow lanes, no shoulders, no guardrail and steep drops as you can see in the above photo. A little dicey in a motorhome towing a car. The origin of the name is in dispute. Some of the possible explanations: it cost one million dollars per mile to build; the fill dirt contains a million dollars in gold ore; or, I wouldn’t drive that road again for a million dollars.
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Situated at an elevation of 10,152 feet, Leadville is the highest incorporated city in the United States. It is located in the heart of the Colorado Rockies about 100 miles west of Denver. For our visit to Leadville, we parked at Sugar Loafin’ Campground. From the streets of Leadville, looking west you will see the two tallest of Colorado’s “fourteeners”: Mount Elbert which peaks at 14,440 feet and Mount Massive at 14,428 feet. After California’s Mount Whitney, Mount Elbert is the second highest peak in the contiguous United States.
You can’t really tell from this photo, but we were having our fastest train ride so far in Italy.
While on ItaliaRail’s Frecciarossa service from Milan to Turin, the train cruised along at a top speed of 300 km per hour. I’ll save you the trouble, that’s about 185 mph.
For us Pisa (pics) was a day trip from Florence. A one hour train ride brought us to the Pisa central train station leaving us a nice 20 minute walk to Piazza dei Mericoli, home to the Tower of Pisa.
Second Act 