Things to do in Durango
Saturday, June 2nd, 2018
Did you know there’s more to do in Durango than buy marijuana from The Greenery? I know… it’s crazy.
In a way, I’ve been doing you a disservice by only talking about cannabis and not telling you about all the other things this town has to offer. And I know it for a fact because lately, the tourists who find us on Google mention these blogs, but then turn around and ask, “so, what should we do while we’re in town?” Well, I apologize, and for this post, I’m going to talk about Durango instead of the best dispensary in it. Here we go:
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I’m never moving.
This town has all the best parts of home without Alaska’s winter darkness, and it has all the best parts of Colorado without Denver’s crowd. The only way this town could be better is if it had a saltwater beach and palm trees hidden somewhere in the south, because Durango has everything else. We have rivers and mountains and culture and history and a ton of love, and this place has become my home, which is a rare thing for an Alaskan because most of us are clingy when it comes to what we call “home.”
But Durango is also The Greenery’s home more so than it is mine. The Greenery was born here, and our business model was breed by locals. We’re staffed with locals, we’re the local’s spot, and even if you’re not a local, we’ll treat you like one while you’re here. If you walked in and asked us what you should do after stopping at The Greenery (quite a few people really do come straight from the airport), we’d tell you to go see these places:
The Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad
Did you know that our hometown train was the one in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and that Robert Redford and Paul Newman rode that train? It blew my mind when I figured that out, even though to my daughter, Paul Newman is “that guy who makes salad dressing and lemonade.”
And even though our train creeps through our town seventeen-hundred times a day blowing that dissonant whistle and belching plumes of smoke, I love that thing. I love that there’s still a real-life steam engine that’s fed with coal, and I love that you can ride it along the cliffs or walk along the tracks and pick up heavy chunks of its black food. If you’re visiting Durango, you need to click on the link at the top of this paragraph and see our train.
This river got its name thanks to all the souls it took when this town was being founded back in the late eighteen-hundreds, so if you’re visiting and you want to raft the Animas, I’d suggest taking a guide like 4 Corners Whitewater. Those people know what they’re doing.
But if you just want to sit by our river and smell what Colorado is about, we have miles of the Animas running through town, and it’s crossed by bridges and bordered by trails. Just go find the river and then spend a day enjoying it. That’s all it takes.
It doesn’t matter if you like skiing when it snows or doing backflips on a mountain bike during the summer months: Purgatory has it all. They have trampolines and ziplines and big-ass slides and a lake for paddle boarding. If you like outside, Purgatory is the place for you while you’re in Durango.
If you have kids, take them here. Or if you’re an adult who acts like a kid when you get stoned, go here. This huge, brick-built building once powered all of Durango, but now it sits restored along the banks of our river, and it’s packed with science and educational fun (which I swear to you is a real thing). The Powerhouse is close to downtown, so you can learn things and then take a short walk to buy and eat things.
This place is to beer as The Greenery is to bud. That’s all I’ll say.
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But even after reading all of that, it’s not like you can’t walk into The Greenery and ask, “so, what should we do while we’re in town?” because most of our budtenders know more about Durango than I do. Everyone has his or her favorite spot or attraction, and it never hurts to ask. So, come see Your Best Buds at 208 Parker Avenue if you’re over twenty-one with a valid I.D., and we’ll share our home with you, right along with the best marijuana in Durango.