Travel

They say travel broadens a person… dang sure easy to broaden when you travel like we do and eat like we do, tho’ this morning when I weighed myself I was a few pounds lighter… sure could have fooled me as we drove over 2000 miles and mostly just sat, ate or slept (sure wish motels believed in providing softer beds… must have some mattress company in cahoots with chiropractors or something!)

Cindy and I took Fr Tyler and Chance and headed out on Sunday in ‘ol Blue, we met Tyler in Rapid City about 1 pm and headed south by slightly west. We camped at a motel in Colorado Springs that night.. the next night, after not much sleep (by me anyway) we went to Royal Gorge and checked it out, Cindy’s second time there, my third and the first for the boys… everyone thought it was cool… followed the Arkansa river west from there with Fr Tyler drooling over the fly fishing available, but he wouldn’t bring his fly rods and didn’t want to stop and rent the stuff… we turned south and headed for Toas (which I had always wanted to visit)  late enough and beings it was Labor Day most things were closed, tho’ we found a fly fishing shop and the boys had a nice visit with the young man running it who also guided fishermen and hunters in fall.. he showed us a lot of cool photos of trophy racks taken by people his guide service helped… not cheap, but looked like if you wanted to spend the bucks they would sure try and get you a good trophy. Left there and headed on down to Santa Fe, got a motel room (with a bit softer beds tho’ Chance didn’t like his) and went and ate at a restaurant within walking distance, Cindy and Tyler had eaten at a few years ago,

Tuesday morning we went off and looked at the first church built in the US, about 1500 and some, so it said.. cool little church with a cool bell you were supposed to whack with a rubber mallet.. I did and supposedly that means it will bring you back.. I hope so, lots to see and do there, but sure is pricey… then on to the Lorretto Chapel.. the story is that when the nuns got it built they realized they had not left room for a staircase leading up to the choir loft.. so they prayed a Novena to St Joseph for a miracle and lo and behold a feller walked in one day carry carpenter tools and went to building the stair case.. he made it a spiral, but it has no central pole… when it was finish and the nuns went to pay the man, he was gone.. he had only his bed and board while building it.. the wood has been analyzed is not the wood from anywhere close by and no one has ever figured out how he managed to do it.. you can’t touch it but you can see it up close.. Chance and I marveled over his craftsmanship, when you consider the few tools he used to make it… the nuns think it was St Joseph himself who came and built it and then disappeared.. I believe in miracles so I sure won’t argue it… we then visited the basilica which is much larger and ornate and a beautiful building on it’s own, tho’ much more modern,, we then went in search of art galleries, but we were directed to the old part of the city which has narrow windy trails and not conducive to a Dodge Dually pickup.. we found lots of galleries, but no near by parking and my feet were hurting already so we said adios to Santa Fe ad headed towards Durango Colorado… managed to stay at the same motel I had stayed at a few years before that I thought was sketchy and high priced.. this time it wasn’t so sketchy, or high priced (goes to show to stay away from Priceline dot com and them others like that .. they charge too much for their fee!) Went to the Straiter Hotel, an old hotel, downtown, for supper.. kind of a cool place where much of the goings on at the Durango Cowboy Poetry gig takes place in October.. I had been there the last two years.. waitress was over run so service was slow, but it sure wasn’t her fault so she got a good tip… went to bed and got up and headed out the next day headed for Mesa Verde.

Mesa Verde is a place I had always wanted to see and we didn’t spend nearly enough time tho’ we did see most of the high point and got some good photos.. I might try and post some on here if I can figure it out… I sure will on Facebook and Cindy already has… it is amazing that people lived there longer than we have been a nation and not much left to show where they went or why they left.. we left there about noon and headed north and a bit west then back east and spent the night in the town where Doc Holliday died… Glenwood Springs. Marty and I had camped there for a night the previous year on our way to Durango.. we passed thru Paradox valley, which was another place I always wanted to see… and came by Moab with Canyonlands, which we found out was once called Robbers Roost on the old Outlaw trail… also saw the place or close to it where Butch and Sundance blew up the train car, scattering money every where, as they used to much TNT to what ever explosive they used…

Got up Thursday morning and headed east then north and got to Kremling Colorado a bit before noon.. followed our directions and went to see Caitlynn Taussig and her mother Vickie and sister Cameron and father Jim… had a great visit, got to play a few songs together and then headed out and got out of their hair.. cool looking country, really wide open and not cluttered up with trees like so much of that region. They call them parks and they do look like it, in the bottoms of the valleys. We got out of there about 2:30 and headed towards Walden and got a bite to eat there and headed north and east again, going thru’ Laramie were Cindy got a couple lugs of Colorado peaches (we couldn’t find any fruit stand near Grand Junction as your on the interstate and it was late when we went by the evening before..). sat up straight and throwed the reins at ol Blue but a nice feller along the way with a badge on his chest stopped there runaway and warned ol’ Blue to keep it to a lope instead of a run away…we turned off at Mule Creek junction and discovered our State loves to slow people down with road work along the way we went but finally got to Rapid, dropped off Tyler and got back home about 12:30 last night.

It was a great trip and everyone seemed to have a good time… ol’ Blue wasn’t even tired tho’ he did eat quite a bit of feed on our over 2000 mile trek.. he’s a good one.