Thursday, May 31, 2012
Cheri May-31-12
9:44 PM | 
Posted by
Sharp's Travels
It was 43 degrees this morning and I wasn’t ready to get out of bed.
Gay was up early this morning. He had an appointment to take the truck in to check out the problem we are having. He left by 7:30 a.m.
I kept busy with housework, laundry and baking. It was 12:30 before Gay returned. He found out we have major problems with the truck. They have to order parts and it will be in the shop for 8 days. We have a leased car to drive in the mean time.
Gay did some grilling for lunch and then we headed for Old Colorado City. This was the first permanent town in the Pikes Peak region. Today they are alive with a 100 fine galleries, museums, specialty shops, boutiques and restaurants.
We wandered the streets and came upon the Michael Garman Museum & Gallery. It was unbelievable. Michael’s goal was simply to sell affordable, hand-made sculptures to ordinary people. He eventually bought a dilapidated building in Old Colorado City and set to work to fulfill his lifelong dream—to create a home for his characters called Magic Town.
Magic Town is a 3,000 sq. ft. sculptural theater. It took Michael over 30 yrs and $1,000,000 to bring to life this vagabond village inspired by his travels.
The city is built at a 1:6th scale, with intricate hotels, bars and restaurants along with hundreds of sculpted characters. There are holograms, trick lighting effects and magical rooms and alleys that transform right before your eyes. It was such a neat thing to see. Our pictures just won’t do it justice.
I wandered (Gay sat outside) through a number of other little shops and then happened upon a QUILT SHOP. I spent some time browsing in there (Gay again sat outside). All in all it was a neat little town.
We then made our way over to the Visitors Center at the Garden Of The Gods. We viewed the movie on how the rock formations in the Garden Of The Gods came to be and then took the driving tour of the Gardens. We got a few pictures but we did not have the energy to do anymore walking so we will go back and do that tour again while we are here. We will post the pictures we took of the Gardens when we do that return visit.
Gay has uploaded a few picture of the day. Click on this link
https://picasaweb.google.com/sharpstravels then click on album: Old Colorado City.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Cheri May-30-12
9:16 PM |
Posted by
Sharp's Travels
This morning when we got up it was only 57 degrees.
It was suppose to reach to the high 70’s today, so we decided to head for Pikes Peak. It is only 35 miles from our park.
We had taken the Cog Railway up Pikes Peak some 20 years ago, so this time Gay wanted to drive the motorcycle to the top. We left our RV Park dressed in our leather jackets. It was cold—I even had a sweatshirt on underneath my jacket and I put the hood up!
The Pikes Peak Highway is a 19-mile toll road (it cost us $22) that starts in Cascade, just 15 minutes west of Colorado Springs. As we begin our climb there are Aspen trees on either side of the road—soon it turns to all pines. You take a deep breath and you can smell the pine. I took pictures from the back of the bike all the way up. The views were breathtaking, even the snow along beside the road. About 5 miles from the top the temperature began to change drastically. My fingers were freezing. When we hit the top we were 14,115 ft above sea level and it was only 33 degrees. It is 59 miles from our RV to the tippy top of Pikes Peak.
I had a bad headache and was so light headed when I got off the bike. Gay said he was a little light headed also. We went inside and ordered coffee and donuts to try and warm up a bit. I did not begin to feel better until we were back down off the peak. I took lots more pictures on our decent. We both agreed coming down was prettier than going up.
We had planned on taking in Manitou Cliff Dwellings next, but we talked to one of the Peak’s employees and he said that these dwellings were brought in as a tourist attraction and were not original to the area. That turned us off immediately. We did, however, go to downtown Manitou and checked out all the little shops and about 4:30pm ended up at BJ’s Bistro for dinner.
We were both tired from our day’s adventure so decided to call it a night. We put on 105 miles today and were back to the RV Park by 6pm.
What a wonderful day.
Gay has uploaded pictures of our Pikes Peak ride. Click on this link https://picasaweb.google.com/sharpstravels then click on album: Pikes Peak
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| My tour guide putting together our agenda for the next two weeks |
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
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Gay May-28-12
8:02 AM |
Posted by
Sharp's Travels
It being Memorial Day we should all take time to think about our loved ones and friends that have passed before us and thank our veterans for keeping our country safe and free. We were on the road by 9:15 am, not sure why we were early as we only have 150 miles to go for the day. As we were driving today I was thinking about all the people that live in the big cities and how close together they are. Out here in Kansas you can drive miles without seeing anyone, somehow it doesn’t seem to make since. Although it’s nice that we get to see all the undisturbed beauty of the rolling prairie, wheat and corn fields. We arrived in Colby Kansas a little after 12:00 pm. We stopped at a Pilot Service Center to fuel up. The diesel price for credit was $3.759 and cash price was $3.699. We used our Good Sam Pilot/Flying J card for the first time and got the diesel for $3.619, nice savings and no going in and prepaying or using multiple credit cards. We drove over to Wal-Mart where we are spending the afternoon and night. We went into Wal-Mart to get a few groceries and then back to the 5th wheel for lunch. Cheri made a delicious pasta salad for lunch and she also baked a cherry pie, what a gal. We decided not to get the generator out today, so no TV. We read this afternoon and later in the evening we started playing a game of Hand, knee and foot. It was getting late and decided to finish the game another day.
Monday, May 28, 2012
Gay May-27-12
6:53 AM |
Posted by
Sharp's Travels
It was a pretty quiet day for us; we lounged around this morning as church wasn’t until 10:30 am. It was good to get back to church as we missed the last two Sundays because we were on the road. We look forward to going to church here in Smith Center, we love listening to the large pipe organ they have. After church we stopped at the grocery store to get a frozen pizza to have for lunch. We tried out the new pizza stone we bought yesterday, boy what a different it made in the crust, it came out nice and brown. Cheri gave me a much needed hair cut this afternoon. Cheri had bought a couple of magazines to read this afternoon. I worked out side for a while getting our water softener regenerated, so we have nice soft water again. When I got done with that I sat down to watch some TV shows that we had recorded, it wasn’t very long before I was asleep. I slept for about an hour and a half while Cheri watched TV. When I woke up we watched a couple of shows and then it was time for me to watch the NASCAR race.
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