Garden of the Gods

Monument, Colorado     High 77 Low 55

Today we went to the Visitor Center at Garden of the Gods. The whole Park is a 1323 acre park owned by the City of Colorado Springs. In 1909, railroad magnate Charles Elliot Perkins bequeathed the Parkland he had purchased in 1879 to the City with the stipulation that it remain open and free to the public. The Park is known for its towering red sandstone formations. The visitor center shows some of the history of the Park and, and has a lot of displays about the local flora and fauna.

Cindy liked the welcome sign in all the different languages.

We found out that Pike's Peak name sake never reached the summit.

This was taken from the upper deck of the visitor center.

Today there were a lot of people enjoying the sights around the Park. The first large parking lot was so full that we were unable to find a parking place. Cindy wanted to get a picture of Balanced Rock without people, but was unable to do so. When we started to leave there was a class C motor home trying to go through a really narrow place in the road. I don’t know if he scrapped his mirror, but if he didn’t, he only missed by inches. The road is so narrow and twisty that he really shouldn’t have been driving a motor home on it. 

Cindy wanted to get a picture with no one in it, but when you look at all the people, you can see that it would have been impossible.

After leaving The Garden of the Gods, we drove through downtown Old Colorado City. It reminded us a lot of downtown Park City. There were a lot of touristy type shops.

This mural was o one of the buildings in Old Colorado City.

Tomorrow we are going to see the Peterson Air and Space Museum. In order to see it, we had to call at least 24 hours in advance and give all of our information, divers license number, age, and phone number. We will be going onto the base and I guess they need to check us out before allowing us in.

Thanks for visiting.

Slowly Headed Home

Monument, Colorado            High 79 Low 55

Yesterday I wasn’t able to post because the RV Park we were staying in had no Wi-Fi and the Verizon service only had 1G and couldn’t get Wi-Fi.

We left Russell Kansas fairly early since we had a long drive yesterday. Cindy took some pictures of the Park in Russel and of the reindeer and the Oil Services Museum across the street from the Park. We didn’t visit the Museum. 

We drove for almost 5 hours to Siebert, Colorado to the Shady Grove RV Park. The name is a misnomer, because there isn't much shade and definately no grove. We were there with Passport America. The only amenity was their over the air TV connection. His antenna was a lot higher than I could have been and we had a good variety of channels. It was not too bad for one night and we liked having power for the AC. It did cool off enough last night that we were able to sleep with windows open.

Today we had almost a three hour drive to Monument. We are at the Colorado Heights Camping Resort with Coast to Coast. We almost didn’t want to stay here because of some bad reviews I had read, but decided to go ahead and originally booked four days. But after seeing all there is around Colorado Springs, we raised it to 6 nights. We have 30 amp electrical, which with the cooler weather than we have been having is adequate. We could have had 50 amp, but decided free was better than $5.00 per day.

This fountain is by the entrance to the Park.

Anyway, who ever gave this Park the terrible reviews must be way fussier than we are. Yes, some of the trees make getting to you site a little hard. We had an escort that made sure we didn’t have any problems. The Park is having a relatively inexpensive dinner tomorrow night and pancake breakfast Saturday. It has what looks like a nice swimming pool, which we might try after the kids leave for the week-end. Some of the sites are too short for us. In fact, the site we were originally assigned to wasn’t near long enough. Our escorts then showed us two other sites and let us have the one we thought would work best for us. On one side the RV next to us is a little close, but we are backed up to a common area with a large fire pit, which is next to what they call the amphitheater, where the meals are sold. We both like this Park.

The large common area.

This afternoon we went into Colorado Springs to look at some of the Quilt stores. I asked Cindy if she wanted to see the quilt stores, but not buy any material. She said sure, but then we could go to some ice cream stores and just look without any tasting. LOL We were good though, and only got the Row by Row patterns at the 3 stores we visited. (She said that because I like ice cream so much.)

This is the Row by Row quilt designed by the stores in the area.

Cindy liked this quilt hanging in one of the stores.

We are slowly heading home, and should be there a week from Monday.

Thanks for visiting.

We Are Back in Russell

Russell, Kansas                 High 93 Low 64

Just a short post tonight. We had a little bit of wind traveling today.

We stopped at one of the Historic sites on the way here. These pictures are the makers at the site.

We only drove 3 hours to a Passport America RV Park in Russell. Since the Triple J and Fossil Creek Parks were close to the same price we decided to try the Triple J Park this time. It is a lot nicer Park with a lot more amenities than the other Park. They must be into Christmas because they have 2 Reindeer here at this RV Park.

The diesel fuel here was $ 2.369 for cash or debit card, so I filled up here.

We also went to the grocery store in town. It is a large well stocked store.

We are only here tonight and will go into Colorado tomorrow.

Thanks for visiting.

Local Quilt Stores

Halstead, Kansas         High 99 Low 75

This morning we drove to the small town Of Yoder. It was named for the Amish farmer that originally started the town. There are several small shops, one of which had a quilt for sale.

After we left Yoder, we drove to Newton to visit the two quilt stores there. On the way we passed what looks like an old gas station and found it interesting. I don’t know how old the trucks are, but they both looked very old as did the gas pumps and signs. It is in front of a farm house. I'll bet the farmer has a good time with people taking pictures. I say this because he waved at us.

We got to Newton and Cindy got some pictures of very nice quilts. We especially liked the colors on the block of the month quilt.

This one and the next picture is the block of the month quilt we liked.

Tomorrow we leave here for Russell, Kansas. It is about 3 hours closer to home. There are two RV Parks there and we are going to try the one we didn’t stay at on the way to Kansas City.

Thanks for visiting.

More Har-Ber Museum Part 2

Halstead, Kansas         High 100 Low 75

It was very hot and humid today and we are supposed to get some rain by morning.

We are back in Kansas at a nice RV Park called Spring Lake Resort. We are here with Coast to Coast. This park seems to have a lot of things going on.

We had an uneventful drive here from Oklahoma and are located about 30 miles north of Wichita. We will be here for 3 nights. We might stay longer depending on whether we can see everything we want to see on Monday. So many Quilt stores and so little time. LOL There is also an Amish community a little ways from us.

Tonight I am going to put more pictures of some of the collectibles we got to see at Har-Ber Village. There are still a lot more that will have to wait till another day.

These shoes looked very narrow.

There were several examples of stills.

Shell collection.

Blacksmith shop.

General store.

Maybe I'm showing my age, but I remembered a lot of these phones.

Old telephone operator's station.

Very old quilts.

We thought all the collections were interesting and we finally were allowed to take pictures in a museum.

Thanks for visiting.