Exploring the San Juan Mountains by JEEP! (Corkscrew Gulch, Animas Forks, & Yankee Boy Basin)

We just climbed a mountain in a jeep for the next 24 hours we are trading in our van for a jeep while we of course love our van brisket it is a bit limiting since it's not 4x4 and while we were here in colorado we really wanted to go on some of the off-roading trails in the silverton and uri area so we're renting a jeep check out our sick ride it's a two-door soft top jeep we rented from switzerland of america jeeps in uri it was 232 kind of pricey but it's going to be worth it and the best part is dogs can ride for free as long as we cover the back seat when we picked up the jeep they gave us a load of maps that outlines all kinds of different options there's one that has an outline of everything that's open so we've been racking our brains trying to figure out what we can do with the time that we have and i think we have a plan so our plan is to leave the van where we're camping tonight which is just off the million dollar highway and then we're going to head up corkscrew gulch down into silverton and then over to animus forks which is a ghost town that we're really excited about and then from there we might just see where the day takes us we were told we could maybe dabble in a little cinnamon pass go to engineer pass engineer pass sounds like it might be a little bit over our skill level we're we're very new at this uh she mentioned that you might be tilted so we'll see what we do from there just kind of how we're doing with time but one thing we really want to do is go to yankee boy basin which is right by yure but she advised us we probably can't do all of this in one day so we're gonna get an early start and we're just gonna see how much we can squeeze in super pumped this is gonna be fun kona is not so sure how she feels about this yet it's so bumpy this is so nuts net would never even think about doing this in the van so it's so cool to like actually do something like this this is crazy sorry in advance if this video gives you whiplash you'll just get to feel like you're experiencing this with us oh this is so fun app update we started right here this morning and we're on corkscrew gulch and so far we've gone all through that we're right here right now and we have to go through this little section which we think will take us to the top of those mountains it was the first time so far i actually had to hold on to the handles in here that that's the first time like my heart got racing i was not confident on that one i just went that could have been bad my heart's still going we just climbed a mountain in a jeep we've only ever climbed mountains with our legs that was incredible we just made it to the top of corkscrew gulch and the view is nuts oh yeah we didn't totally know what to expect when we got to the top of corkscrew gulch but these views are some of the best mountain views we've ever seen in our entire life there are just mountains all around snow covered it's just so magical and unbelievable and oh man next up we're headed to animus forks which is a mining ghost town located on the famous alpine loop it's a 65 mile backcountry byway that connects the towns of euray silverton and lake city and it was actually created by auto mirrors the same guy who created the million dollar highway and he created it as a toll to be able to get to all the mining camps in the area the roads on the alpine loop vary when they open year to year like late may june through like september october it kind of just depends on the snow level not all the roads are open right now so we actually have to go down through silverton and then over to animus forks to get to it because california pass is still closed we're on some smooth roads for a bit which is a nice little break from all the bumpiness i think kona's a little happier right now too she's like not hating it but she's not loving it either all right back on the bumpy roads four by four engaged we finally made it down the long bumpy road to animus forks animus forks is located about 12 miles northeast of silverton it is one of the highest mining camps in the nation at 11 200 feet and they dubbed themselves the largest city in the world at this altitude the first cabins were built by prospectors in 1873 and by 1876 it was a bustling mining community with 30 cabins a hotel saloon post office and general store the town reached its height around 1882 when they established their own newspaper many more shops opened and they even had their own school district in the mid-1880s speculative mining in the area slowed to a halt and animus forks began its decline it had a resurgence in 1903 when new investors came in and new technology making mining the lower grade ores cheaper to process and more economically feasible by 1910 most of the mining had stopped and it was a ghost town by the 1920s so there are nine buildings that remain here at animus forks which have been stabilized and restored and a couple of the more notable ones are the two-story duncan house the columbus mill and the jail and what's crazy is all the buildings are open and you can walk around and explore them the floors are a little creaky they're not as structurally sound as houses are these days and obviously treat this place with respect don't leave trash just be a good human because it's a privilege that we're able to walk in here and just see this history up close i read that this is the original linen wallpaper in this house here pretty nuts if you can't tell what that big hole in the bench there is glowing on camera it's glowing it's a golden glowing throne it's a toilet the outhouse at least they kind of had a indoors outhouse this newspaper was used as insulation and it's dated 1907 114 years old something like that found in the outside wall they found this in 2002 so as we mentioned in our last video we're super into a youtube channel right now called ghost town living so being here at a ghost town is extra exciting for us right now and we have visited one other ghost town before garnet ghost town in montana but the difference between that one and this one is that that one had furniture and it was kind of like redecorated to resemble what it looked like back in the day the buildings were still really really old it was a little bit more polished this one is just empty buildings kind of sketchy floors you have to walk on wallpaper falling down and it feels like we had just stumbled upon these abandoned buildings in the mountains this is the gold prince mine it was built in 1905 and when it was built it was the largest and most expensive mill built in the state of colorado it was so expensive because a lot of it was built out of metal instead of just wood and it had a 500 ton output every day and there was a 12,600 foot long aerial tram built from the gold prince mine to bring ore here and it was finally dismantled in 1917 we decided to take the easy way back to uray on the million highway and this is our fourth time driving this road now and the views never get old we had to come get the van so we can move it to your race that way when we're done renting the jeep we actually have a vehicle so we're not vehicleless and we can get around we have about three and a half hours until we have to return the jeep so we're gonna go give yankee boy basin a shot so yankee boy basin is about eight miles west of uray and we have about 3.7 miles to go although we hear that it's not open the entire way i'm not exactly sure where it ends i think it's after the second restroom which is pretty close to the end but they basically just let the snow melt out from that point on they don't actually like clear the road the road so far wasn't too bad it was just really gravelly but we just made the turn off to yankee boy basin and it's really rough now we made a pit stop at twin falls which is a multi-level waterfall here and the views are just insane the mountain peaks out here are so jagged which is my favorite kind of mountain peak i love the really spiky kind and when we started the drive we were in trees for a while and the views were okay like you couldn't you just couldn't see a ton but man has it opened up once we got to the rough part of the road it really got good oh yeah i will say this is probably the scary the scariest road of the day in my opinion these super bumpy parts you're you're bouncing around so much and trying to keep your balance in the seat it's almost like its own workout it's pretty intense and you you feel really tired after a tough section like this i haven't done any of the hard work and i feel tired from all of this oh god apparently you can go a bit farther than we thought you could but we have about two hours 15 minutes until we need to return the jeep we still have to go wash the jeep because that's a requirement before you return it so we're gonna head back now but we are so glad we just decided to go for this and just see how far we could go because look at this it has been so amazing and i'm oh gosh and i'm sure it's even more amazing if you go to the end but even if you just turn around kind of right after the waterfall you're still in for a treat sadly we just returned the jeep but just to give you a recap of where we went today we started today going up corkscrew gulch and then we came down this road called glad stone to silverton and then we took county road two up to animus forks spent a little time there and then we went up to the million dollar highway up to yure and then did some of the yankee boy basin we had the best time in the jeep i i think it's probably like our favorite thing we've done in a really long time it was just we're we're not always limited in the van but we can be really limited in the van it was nice to actually get to go explore an area that without that jeep we would not have been able to go to in every spot we went to was beautiful it was all kind of just different scenery yeah if you can rent a jeep in colorado do it it was just not only beautiful it was just so fun just driving it was fun maybe it's because we've never done four by four before i don't know but we do still have one more day here in the yure area and we're going to explore it in a little bit of a less intense and exhilarating way check out our sick ride two wheel do not a two wheel drive it turns out even in a jeep we still go slower than everyone else on these kinds of roads