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Animas River

5 Durango Restaurants to Bike to

One of the greatest things about Durango is that you can ride your bike everywhere you need to go in town. Durango is not only bike friendly, but the city is continuously making improvements to our roads by add more bike lanes, and making it increasingly safer for bikers/cyclists. If riding on the main roads sounds a bit scary, Durango has an amazing river trail system just for that. Not only is the river trail great for taking an afternoon stroll, exercising and accessing the river...but it also has some great restaurants along the way. 

  1. Animas Brewing Company

    Animas Brewing Company (ABC) is located right off the river trail at Rotary Park. They have great in-house brews and a delicious food menu. A great place for impromptu dinners since they don't catch the rush of people from downtown. They have great burgers and pasties (meat pies), check out their full menu on their website.

  2. Powerhouse Science Center

    The Powerhouse Science Center is located right on the river trail where Camino Del Rio meets Main Avenue. The Powerhouse is a great place to take your kids, and it is not just a museum! In the summer season, they open their tent outside and sell beer and hot dogs! Great Saturday activity for the fam! For adults, make sure to check out their Trivia night on Thursdays at 6:30 PM. Bring four of your friends to make a team of 5, and enjoy local brews while playing 5 rounds of 10 questions! Check out their website for more details.

  3. Serious Texas Barbecue

    Serious Texas Barbecue is located off the river trail and up Camino Del Rio by the Durango Mall. A little farther along the river trail, you will get a little exercise in before a yummy lunch or dinner! This Serious Texas location is great because it overlooks the river and they have a great outdoor seating. When the weather is nice, after eating you can enjoy a round of mini-golf with the kids! Perfect activity after eating a huge Texas Taco (local favorite, beef brisket with cheesy potatoes, onion and jalepeno on a flour tortilla). Check out their website for their entire menu.

  4. Ska Brewing Co

    Ska Brewing Co is a little farther than the previous three. You will have to bike across Camino Del Rio and up the sloped Girard Street. Here you can drink local, award-winning beer at the Ska World Headquarters. Don't forget to try the local seasonal favorite, Mexican Logger. To soak up some of those suds, you can grab some grub at their restaurant, The Container. The kitchen and pizza oven are located inside a shipping container attached to the main building. Find great fresh salads, sandwiches, and brick oven pizza served from 11 AM to 8 PM. Check out their website for more info and events.

  5. RESTAURANT COMING SOON!

    Stay tuned, and keep a look out on my blog! There is a new restaurant coming soon to Durango and it will be located on the river! Another great place to bike to and enjoy a beautiful summer day. I will release more details as soon as this transaction closes! 

 

Our Beloved Animas River

Photo Credit: Jerry McBride—Durango Herald

Photo Credit: Jerry McBride—Durango Herald

You've probably heard the recent news of the contamination of the Animas River. The EPA was reportedly doing some clean up work and caused a spill of over 3 million gallons of toxic mine waste water into our river. 

A huge orange plume of contaminated water made its way down through Durango, leaving sediment and solids behind. The content is believed to be mostly metals such as iron, manganese, lead and other scary stuff like mercury and arsenic. 

This is of course devastating to the community on so many levels. I'd say everyone who lives in Durango appreciates our natural beauty and environment. There are over 1,000 water wells that are affected, numerous irrigation ditches that serve our farms and livestock, and of course City of Durango pulls water from the Animas daily- an estimated 5+ million gallons. Currently they've taken measures to close off the ditches and City water system and pull water from other sources but that means strict conservation for in-town residents. 

Who will be accountable to the farmers and ranchers, raft companies, fly fishermen who have hundreds of employees and currently zero income? Who will be accountable to the residents of Durango who rely heavily on this life blood for recreation, tourism, and drinking water? What about the communities downstream, like the Navajo Nation and Lake Powell and the Colorado River?

This is a very devastating event that I believe will take years to recover. I would say a couple positives have come out of this: 

1. An amazing amount of people in our community are concerned and making their voices heard. 

2. This sheds some light on an issue that has been ongoing for years. There are hundreds of mines north of Durango that need to be cleaned up. Our river has been polluted before. Hopefully this event will bring some awareness to getting things cleaned up. 

3. This is a good reminder how precious our Earth is and how much we need to appreciate it and not take it for granted. We choose to live in a beautiful community and it's important we take care of it. 

While there are many unknowns at this point, and we have very little information from the EPA regarding how bad this really is and how this will all be cleaned up, here are some resources for more information. 

Background story- Very informative! This is not a new issue.

http://www.hcn.org/articles/when-our-river-turned-orange-animas-river-spill

Listen to Past Community Meetings

Listen to the most recent community meeting: http://livestream.com/durango-herald

Stay up to date with future meetings by visiting the La Plata County Website:

http://www.co.laplata.co.us/

Sign a Petition to hold the EPA responsible for their actions. Not sure how valuable this is, they did admit fault, but as a government agency how are they going to hold themselves accountable?

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/hold-epa-employees-responsible-discharge-mine-waste-animas-river-colorado

I'm keeping hope that things are not as bad as they could be and we find a way to resolve things soon. 

I'll keep you posted! 

Animas River Trail Expansion

      Durango's Multi-Modal and Parks and Recreation Advisory boards met in early July to discuss the different possible options of extending the Animas River Trail. Currently the river trail starts on 32nd street and extends all the way to river road by Home Depot and Grease Monkey.

      The expansion talk is focusing on connecting the south end of the trail at River Road to Three Springs. This will benefit the community in multiple ways. Residents of Three Springs will be able to connect to the rest of the community, as well as kids could ride their bikes to Escalante Middle School via the river trail. 

       This brings up the question of how. One option would be having the river trail cross over Highway 550. The other options in discussion would be adding a bridge. This would add at least $2 million extra to the expansion project. Bridge benefits would include safely crossing a busy highway, which is important to the parents of our community. 

       Cons of building a bridge, besides price, would include a disruption of flow for river trail goers. There would be steep areas and tight turns for bikers and runners.

       Comments are open for review by the boards until July 31. The boards have not yet made a decision of how they will expand, and have not expressed a timeline for the construction plan. You can read more about the Animas River Trail Expansion in the Durango Herald here.

Source: http://www.durangogov.org/DocumentCenter/View/33

Source: http://www.durangogov.org/DocumentCenter/View/33

Summer in Durango

Living in Durango is a conscious choice by many. People don't typically "end up" here, they often make it a goal to live here and figure out the housing and job equation later. Some of the things I love about Durango in the summer are the Farmer's Market, the local, organic produce, and the river! 

Here's a picture of my recent score at the Farmer's Market from Cartwheel Clothing. Jennifer makes some awesome kid's clothes!! Baby Krueger will be stylin'!

We also joined the Twin Buttes CSA this year. I've been really pleased with the quality of the produce. Their salad greens are delicate and delicious. We often get a nice variety of herbs (cilantro, basil, dill, garlic and garlic scapes), Swiss chard, baby romaine lettuce, radishes, green onions.... the list goes on. Right now Twin Buttes has opened their CSA to 40 members that don't live in the neighborhood, but soon this community garden will be shared with residents only. They also have fresh eggs and honey! 

If you don't know much about Twin Buttes, you should check them out here. This community is located just west of Durango and offers a sustainable, energy efficient lifestyle. They have miles of awesome riding and hiking trails and their amenities will include things like a farm to table restaurant, a holistic healing center and much more. So far they are taking reservations for vacant lots and will be closing on them sometime in the next 6 months or so. Vertical construction will likely be happening in 2015. This neighborhood will create about 300 new home sites for people who are wanting to be close to town! 

A couple Friday's ago we decided to walk down to the river with our paddle boards to cool off. Ryder's favorite part is using his squirt gun!! The water is still pretty chilly, but I am happy to report that the current level is at about 900 CFS. It has come down significantly in the past weeks, but it appears to be higher than 2012 and 2013 at this time of year. Check out this cool graph, courtesy of Durango Herald. 

If you have any good ideas for activities this summer in Durango, let me know!!!