Saturday Morning

After another continental breakfast at the Comfort Inn, we had a few hours of time to kill before the noon deadline for returning the car rental. We drove Southwest of Denver on I-70 to Red Rocks Park. This is similar to Garden of the Gods, except the rocks are more horizontal and there happens to be a HUGE ampitheater between two of the largest rocks. They were setting up for a concert while we were there. At least 7 semi trucks were lined up unloading gear. I overheard that John Mayer was playing. It sucks to not have one more day....

Friday afternoon

After the Coors tour, we moved on to the Colorado Railroad Museum down the road. There was an HO layout running, along with historical displays and models in the exhibit building. Outdoors there were what seemed to be a hundred engines and cars. There is an active roundhouse repair shed with a turntable for refurbishing the display equipment. In this picture is one of the original inclined railroad engines from Pikes Peak (now modern diesel units are used).

Friday - Pilgrimage to Mecca

Upon arrival in Golden, the highway brought us to the Coors brewery for a tour. Above the Coors brands, they also produce Molson, Keystone, Killians, Blue Moon, and Zima. The brewery here is the world's largest single site facility. This is the only site facility in the world that does all of the following: makes it's own cans, glass bottles, and packaging onsite; grows it's own grain on company owned farms, then malts it at the brewery; and ships it's product out by rail. The boys enjoyed the end of tour visit to the "Coors Lounge" for root beer, while dad enjoyed a Blue Moon and mom had a Zima.

Friday morning

We left Rusty and Rachel's house around 7am and headed East crossing the great divide at Monarch pass again, then heading North on highway 285, then on 24 towards Leadville. This was a nice flat drive between the mountains. At Leadville, we drove on 91, which crosses Fremont pass (11,318') and eventually connects onto Interstate 70 at Copper Mountain. Just East of here is the Eisenhower tunnel, which allows you to go "under" Loveland pass (11,990') for a distance of 1.7 miles through the mountain. After the tunnel, we headed to Golden on Hwy 6, which is in a Clear Creek canyon and has lots of short tunnels. By far this was most scenic drive I've ever taken in one day.

Thursday evening

After a fine dinner of Alaskan King Crab and craft beer, we met up with another of Russ's co-workers in Gunnison, who took us rafting down the Gunnison river. We only travelled about 10 miles, with a few rapids, but the kids had a blast. In the morning, we will be heading out from here and making our way back to the Denver area, staying near Golden before flying back on Saturday.

Thursday

This morning we got up and drove out to the Curecanti Recreation Area for a boat cruise through the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. The park service has a 40 seat pontoon that they use for tours of the river. The boat takes you 7 miles down and back through some phenomenal scenery. The canyon walls average over 2000 feet on each side of the river, with the total depth of the canyon being one of the deepest in the entire country.

Wednesday evening

Had pork loin on the grill for dinner, with more Colorado craft beer of course. After dinner, Anne and I took the boys to Sonic for 99 cent root beer floats, which they absolutely hated. When we got back, Russ had a co-worker and her husband over for a guitar jam, I got to play the Banjitar. Boat tour at the Curicanti tomorrow morning.

Wednesday

Mid morning we drove about 45 minutes North-East of Gunnison to some Federal land up in the highlands. From the time we turned off Hwy 50 until we got to the picnic area, we had gained 2000 feet of elevation. The road/drive/clearing? was ok for most of the way, but then quickly became what a rental Chevy Cobalt was not meant for. There are numerous creeks in this area, so we brought the gold panning equipment and went to work. We didn't end up with much that was worthwhile, but it was fun for us and the kids. Then we had lunch (the boys got to have a self-heating MRE, neato). After lunch, I went back to panning while Russ and the boys went on a hike. If you look at the group photo above, look at the left side of the center mountain. The spot of snow was where they went. It was 11,400' elevation and well above the tree line. The kids carried back snowballs for proof.

Tuesday Evening

Naps and quiet time this afternoon. Elk burgers on the grill, craft beers to go along with them. Watching the Deadliest Catch marathon on Discovery channel.

Tuesday morning

We drove over an hour to Lake City, which is down by the San Juan mountain range. Lake City is the "trailhead" for the Alpine Loop, which goes outward through Engineer pass and returns through Cinnamon pass. As facinating as it sounds, we did not venture very far on the loop, as it has a 4x4 high clearance chassis requirement. But we did make it to the Hardtack Mine, which gives tours and interprets the operations of a Colorado silver mine in the 1800's. The tour is entirely underground into a transfer shaft in the hill. Even the gift shop is an area that the owner blasted out himself. The kids had a real good time at this one. The owner was real glad that we came, because no one else did on this tour....

Monday Evening

Sunday evening involved my brother stating: "hey, can you check out this pipe out for me? Apparently, since their house was built, the trap underneath the bathtub was NEVER hooked up. For however long, all of the bathtub water was draining into the crawlspace. Luckily, this is Colorado and the air is dry enough to not let this cause a huge mold problem. It took a few minutes to fix, but Russ decided to check out the other tub drain, which he found to be leaking too. So we ran down to Hardware Hank and got some plumbers putty and a very expensive Crescent wrench (which subsequently was returned to Hardware Hank). Now, both tubs do not drain into the basement. Neato.

Monday afternoon

Went to the Gunnison Pioneer Museum before lunch today. Much of it is an assortment of buildings that contain the things that your family wouldn't pay to have hauled away after your grandma passed away, so they ended up here. There were two notable areas here: the antique car collection, and the railroad collection and train. Most everything else was interesting to browse through like the arrowheads, rocks and minerals, and scale models.

Sunday night

We arrived in Gunnison around 4:30pm. We will be spending the week here with my brother and his family. Most of the week is planned out, using this as our base. We travelled through Monarch pass (11,312'), which is much more scenic and pleasant than driving Loveland pass. Almost NO SEMIS! We stopped at the top of the pass to take pictures and look at the snow. More news tomorrow.

Sunday

Mid morning found us driving out to Royal Gorge Park outside of Canon City. The first thing we went to was the inclined railway. This takes you 1200 feet almost vertically down to the rivers edge in the canyon. Next, we headed over to the cable tram, which carries you 1200 feet above the river with a span of a quarter mile between stations. After that excitement, we walked across the bridge. On the other side of the gorge there is an wildlife animal farm, petting zoo, and a bungee swing. While we were there, there was a civil war re-enactment on the bridge, and a shoot-out at the old-time town square. We stood right on the sidewalk while it was going down. After ice cream we headed out to Gunnison.

Saturday night

We left Colorado Springs around 2:30pm and drove to Canon City. It's funny, you can still see Pikes Peak from here. We checked in to the hotel and went to eat at Wild West Steakhouse. Real good food and the kids had fun throwing peanut shells on the floor. (yes, it one of those places that has a huge bucket of in-the-shell peanuts on every table, and the floor makes crunching noises when you walk). The morning's plans include breakfast at the hotel, then to the Royal Gorge Bridge park. More later.

Saturday afternoon

After getting back to Manitou Springs from the cogwheel trip to Pike’s Peak, we decided to move on to the Garden of the Gods. This is a spectacular place because it’s free. Also, because the massive red stone monoliths are neat too. Remember, this is another “don’t touch the large red stone monoliths” park. Which explains why we saw at least 20 people climbing them with their dogs and kids. We were happy just walking around them avoiding damaging the fragile stone unlike the illiterate of America.

Saturday morning

Saturday morning began with the continental breakfast at the Comfort Inn, which has a buffet bar of make-your-own waffles, cereals, bagels, muffins, sweetroll things, and your choice of beverages to wash it down with. Not shabby for complimentary.
We had to hurry to get to our reservations for the 8am cogwheel train to the top of Pikes Peak. It's about an hour and 15 minute ride to the peak, with a 45 minute stay at the top. Definitely worth the money. If you ever go, bring gloves and a stocking cap. It's not friendly to bare skin. The scenery is incredible with boulders, streams and terrain that you can't see any other way but off trail hiking. (This is slightly easier to the peak than hiking.) At the top, you can buy fresh homemade donuts, good coffee, and purchase large amounts of tourist trap junk.

Friday Evening

After we settled in at the hotel, we decided to head down to Manitou Springs and visit the Cave of the Winds. It's a typical water eroded limestone cave. After they warned us that there is a $2500 fine for touching anything in the cave other than the railing due to some stupid natural resources law, I noticed how much of the cave was chiseled out and had concrete floors. All in all, it was a good tour, but the downside was that the guide literally runs to the next spot and doesn't let you stay at any one point long enought to take decent pictures.

Friday afternoon.

We just got to the hotel. Here's the view of Pike's Peak from outside the room.

We might go to Cave of the Winds tonight. More later.

On the plane Saul wrote....

Right now the houses are dots. We are 34,952 feet high and traveling 486 miles per hour. The airport is a very busy place. Did you know that Andy the pronghorn antelope is on the tail? We are landing soon.

It's Thursday Night.

It's still Thursday evening, the kids are excited, the dogs are at the kennel, and I just got done mowing the lawn. It wasn't a good day at work, so I'm looking forward to the trip even more as an escape. Probably an hour into the flight, I'll forget about what happened this week and it won't matter. For those of you tuning in from work, it wasn't you, so just chill.

I'm printing out the boarding passes now. That's cool that you can do that. We're flying on Frontier airlines, and I just got our flight number and gate information. We'll even be flying on Andy (a pronghorn antelope) the Airbus 319. Each plane is different, but I thought the grizzly bear would have been better than a pronghorn antelope, but I guess it's better than Erma the ermine (mink rodent thing)

By the way, I've enabled anonymous comments for those of you who aren't normal bloggers, just hit comments below