Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Cheri May-29-12
8:03 AM | 
Posted by
Sharp's Travels
We were up early and went into Wal-Mart to buy donuts for breakfast and then on down to the Pilot gas station for a cup of coffee.
We headed out on Interstate 70. We only had 235 miles to go today. As soon as we crossed over into Colorado we stopped at the Burlington Visitors Center. I wanted to get brochures for the areas we’d be touring in Colorado.
To our surprise they had The Old Town Museum there. It was like stepping back in time re-creating a turn-of -the -century prairie town. The main building housed old tractors, cars, trucks, and a chuck wagon camp site along with 24 frames of different barb wire. We didn’t know there were so many different kinds of barb wire!
The prairie town had 21 fully restored historical buildings housing authentic artifacts. Each building we went into had an audio box that explained what we were viewing.
At the Depot I tried Morse code on the telegraph. The Bank and the Land Office shared a building. There was a Barber Shop, a Beauty Parlor and the Bath House in another building. Of course the Barber Shop was in the front of the building because men always came first back then. The Cream Shop was next. My Mom used to use a separator like the ones we saw. She used to make her own butter. I never knew what margarine was until I left home. The General Store was neat and had a special area where they cut meat. The Blacksmith Shop had the big bellows and all the tools of the trade. We were impressed with the sod house. The sod bricks were layered with the grassy sides on top of each other. This one had 2 rooms and windows! The school house was neat. Check out the pictures and read about the rules the teachers had to follow. The Church had a tin ceiling and a slanted floor going towards the front of the church. No one would have a bad seat in there. There was a rope hanging down right in front of us as we walked in. Of course I had to pull it and check out the sound of the bell. They had a Doll House, Carpenter Shop, Jail, Texaco Station, and Saloon.
I guess my favorite was the Manor House. It was a two story home. The kitchen had a big, old iron stove like my Grandma cooked on. Touring all the rooms and seeing the old furnishings was really neat.
We spent about 21/2 hours there at the museum. The time went by so fast. After we completed the tour we decided to have chocolate malts at the soda fountain. Gay ended up eating mine and I went back for a chocolate shake. I didn’t like that malt flavoring.
It was time to move on. We were tooling along—things were going great. We turned off Interstate 70 onto HWY 24. All of a sudden an alarm goes off. It was the water temperature alarm with a 25 second warning and an auto engine shut down. Luckily we found a side road to pull off on. Gay pops the hood to check the water reservoir. He adds some water and then someone stopped and offered us some help. It looks like the thermostat is sticking. Gay tried starting the truck and it had cooled off and we were on our way again. Well, about a ½ mile from our campground, the alarm went off again. Gay had to add more water and that got us to the campground. We will have to look up a dealer and get a new thermostat for the truck before leaving here.
We are staying in the Colorado Heights Resort Campground in Monument, Co. It is about 18 miles out of Colorado Springs. Our campsite is very nice. We are on Mountain Time. Our home was all set up by 4pm. Now we have to plan our day tours for the next two weeks.
Gay has uploaded pictures of the Old Town Museum. To see the pictures click on this link https://picasaweb.google.com/sharpstravels then click on album: Old Town Museum
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