Summer in the Rockies Begins and We Reveal Our Little Surprise

At Colorado Springs KOA, Fountain, Colorado...

One of the annoying things about the new Blogger format is the change in font sizes. As you may have noticed, I've had to change to a Verdana font instead of my preferred Georgia. This is because the Georgia font in the new Blogger is too small in the "normal" setting and too large in the "large" setting. Verdana allows a compromise of sorts, but I still don't like it. I wish they had left the platform alone; it was doing just fine.

I'll get right to the surprise about which I teased in previous posts, which has probably been blown way out of proportion. No, we're not replacing Phannie (shudder the thought), and we're not replacing Mae (she's doing just fine); we haven't gotten a pet, and Sandy is not pregnant (you would have seen that on worldwide TV for sure). The surprise is that we are caravaning, sort of, for the first time on a multi-state, multi-month tour. 

A couple of our many great friends, Carolyn and Larry, have met us in Colorado Springs, and they will be traveling with us for most of the next couple of months as we tour Colorado, Yellowstone and parts of Utah. They will take a brief detour without us to the Dakotas for a few days but, for most of the trip, we will be traveling together. Here they are with Phannie--almost a twin sister coach to theirs--in the background.

We are blessed with a number of couples who are great friends and with whom we've traveled together in the past, but this will be the first time we've done a long caravan-type trip. (I suppose you can call two motorhomes traveling together a caravan, can't you?) Larry and Carolyn seem perfectly suited for this, as we share many interests, and our mindsets are centered mostly around an easygoing lifestyle.

Our first adventure was to make the necessary Pike's Peak drive right away. This photo was taken at about the 10,000-foot level:

I also liked this view of the rocks and trees against the mountain backdrop. It would have been nice if the weather had cooperated a little better:

I couldn't help but take a photo of a chipmunk nearby, who seemed not at all uncomfortable with my close proximity. There's no telling how many times he/she has been photographed:

Next is a photo at the summit (I have a confession to make; this photo was taken on our last visit--not this one. This was because of the current construction of a new visitor center at the summit; there was little area to park, and the line of visitors to get to this sign for a photo was way too long. Out our ages, hanging around a long time at over 14,000 feet is, well, unwise.) By the way, the outside air temperature on the instrument panel read 52 degrees when we were here this time with Larry and Carolyn. From our attire in the photo below, it appears to have been colder on our previous visit. By the way, it appears that Pike's Peak has gained some height since I was here as a kid some 60 years ago. It's elevation was only 14,110 then. 

Naturally, we had to meet up with local friends Phyllis and her sister, Vicki, a high school classmate of Sandy's. They live in Colorado Springs and love it there:

That's Vicki nearest the camera and Phyllis to her right. Larry and Carolyn are in the background.

Vicki picked a really unique restaurant named 'The Airplane,' built around an old military C-97 now resting at the Radisson hotel near Peterson Air Force Base. 

In the photos below, you can see that the left wing of the airplane, including one of the engines, protrudes into the dining room. Dining is also available upstairs in the fuselage itself, but it wasn't air conditioned up there, so we opted to stay on the "ramp."  

In the photo below, you can see the landing gear outside the dining room window:

Naturally, the cockpit was interesting to me, and I have to admit it was the largest I've ever seen, and I've seen many.  I would love to have flown this bird.

Here's a photo of the airplane's exterior and the attached dining room:

Here are a few statistics for you airplane buffs (like me):

The C-97 was the military version of the luxurious Boeing Stratocruiser, which was a trans-oceanic passenger airliner in its day. More than eight hundred of these--mostly military versions--were built between 1944 and 1952, and they served a number of functions, including refueling tankers, cargo carriers and personnel carriers. They were finally retired from military service in 1978. Developed by Boeing from the famous B-29 (most of the airplane except the fuselage and cockpit was identical to the B-29), it was powered by four monstrous Pratt and Whitney R-4360 engines, each of which developed 3,500 horsepower. Later in its long life, one variant of the airplane was even fitted with a jet engine underneath each wing. Of 888 that were built, only one remains flyable, owned by a commemorative group in Germany.

Thank you, Vicki and Phyllis, for a memorable lunch. You couldn't have pleased us (especially me) better!

Back to our Colorado Springs adventure: We took Carolyn and Larry to the Royal Gorge in Canon City, where they walked the bridge and took the gondola across the 900-foot span that rises 955 feet above the Arkansas River. This was the highest bridge in the world until 2001, when a higher one was built in China. It was constructed in 1929 at a cost of $350,000. If built today, the cost would exceed $20,000,000:

We decided to take a little side trip to Cripple Creek, an old gold-mining town on the other side of Pike's Peak. There are two gold mines nearby, one of which is no longer in production but is conducting tours. The other, the Cripple Creek and Victor mine, is still producing with formidable proven reserves. It is the only active gold mine in Colorado and will probably be producing for many years to come.. 

The town of Cripple Creek is centered around one main street with quaint old buildings housing plenty of bars and casinos--and probably brothels back in the day:

Cripple Creek was founded in 1890 when a man named Bob Womack discovered gold near the surface of what was thought to be pasture land at an altitude of 9,400 feet. His discovery triggered the Colorado gold rush of 1890, and the town swelled with prospectors. Although some 500 million dollars worth of gold had been taken from the mine and various other claims within his lifetime, Womack died penniless. Poor guy--sounds like my kind of luck.

We also stopped in at the old train depot that is currently a gift shop. The girls, of course, had to buy something:

I just had to include one of the old locomotives that was once used to bring ore out of the mine. Grandson Mason is a train buff, and he will notice how similar it looks to Thomas the Train.  This one was built in 1935 in Germany and was used for around a half century before its retirement.

No trip to Colorado Springs would be complete without a tour of the strange red rock formations in the Garden of the Gods:

Since this was their first visit to Colorado (and to most of the places on this trip), Larry and Carolyn seemed captivated by the beauty of what they've seen, and we are delighted to serve as their guides. We certainly weren't the best available, but we were definitely the cheapest. There is, of course, much more to see in Colorado Springs, but we had to move on. We're fond of telling them they "ain't seen nothin' yet!"

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; 

please forgive me if I fail to appreciate it each day as I should.

We don't stop playing because we get old; we get old because we stop playing. 

 ---George Bernard Shaw

"I get up every morning, and I just don't let the old man in." ---Clint Eastwood