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Friday, September 22

Breakfast at McDonald's in Burlington at 9am before hitting the road.

Colorado / Kansas border at 10:30am. Stopped for pictures (of course). Please set your watch forward to Central Time.

Late lunch at Chili's in Salina, KS at 3pm. Filled up the tank in Salina, too.

Got on the Kansas Turnpike and headed for the Oklahoma border. Got there at 5:30pm.

Peed in Paul's Valley, OK at 8pm and filled up the tank.

Stopped for dinner at 9pm at Applebee's in Ardmore, OK.

Got to the Texas border at 10:15pm. The picture above was the only one I took with a flash the entire trip.

Got back to Dallas at 11:45pm.

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Wednesday, September 20

After breakfast at Burger King, we headed to downtown Denver to visit the Downtown Aquarium. The pictures above are all from there. Yes, they have tigers at the aquarium. Go figure. We wandered around in there from about 10:45am until 3:45pm.

Then we drove up to Broomfield, where I've been before (I helped with the installation of the voice system on their ZIP Shuttle, the free shuttle that takes people around the Flatiron Crossing area). We had lunch at Red Robin, and then rode the ZIP Shuttle around the loop. I recognized the driver and called him by name, which kind of surprised Lisa.

After our little bus ride, we watched The Black Dahlia at the AMC theaters in Flatiron Crossing. Good movie, but a little hard to "get" on the first watch. Might be a good one to pick up in the bargain bin at Wal-Mart someday.

After driving back to Denver, we found a Super 8 motel in a better part of town.

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Thursday, September 21

We slept in and ended up having breakfast at lunchtime at the Denver Diner.

Then we headed for the Denver Zoo, and got there about 1:30pm. We probably should have tried to arrive earlier to spend more time there. There was some confusion about when the zoo closed - one sign said 5pm and another said 6pm. According to their website, the admission gates close at 5pm, but shortly after 5pm, most of the animals were brought indoors, and there wasn't much to see anymore. We thought we had until 6pm, but if I'd known what it was going to be like after 5pm, I would have gone to see favorites first instead of saving them to the end. I only saw a few monkeys, and no birds of prey.

We left the zoo about 5:30pm and decided to get a jump on the drive home since we had already checked out of the Super 8. We had decided to go back the long way (but on more major highways), so we headed east.

Stopped for gas in Deer Trail, CO at about 6:15pm; and had dinner in Limon, CO at Denny's about 7:30pm.

We got to Burlington, CO at about 8:45pm and spent the night at Chaparral Motor Inn.

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Tuesday, September 19

I made reservations for the Royal Gorge Railroad. This is the main thing that I wanted to do in Colorado, and the reason we stopped first at Ca\u00f1on City. I've been over the bridge (it's been a number of years), but hadn't ridden the train through the canyon. I bought tickets for the 12:30pm trip, and they said we should be there around noon, and would start boarding at 12:15pm.

We slept in, packed up, checked out of the hotel, and went to Denny's for breakfast about 10am. Then we set off for the mouth of the Royal Gorge.

There are quite a few pictures above. We waited around for the previous group to arrive, and then loaded onto the train. There were a couple of open cars with just rails around them so you could get a better view not only to the sides but upwards, as well. The river ran on the left of the train as we were going up the canyon. There was an old water line that was constructed of wood and wrapped in wire many years ago. It was obviously not in use anymore, and breaking apart. You'll see pictures of the bridge (long claimed to be the world's highest suspension bridge at 1,053 feet) as taken from below. The train only goes about 15 mph, but in a couple of shady, windy places, it was actually chilly on the observation car. Whooo hooo! I really enjoyed this.

Filled up the gas tank and got slurpees at the "Loaf 'N Jug" quicky mart, and then headed back into town.

We stopped at the Holy Cross Winery and visited their tasting room. The winery and the abbey are separate buildings, and apparently the abbey was converted into a monastary a number of years earlier. And since that time, the monastary had ceased operation and the land was sold to the state corrections system. The winery leases its land and building from the new owners, and there's an agreement that the original abbey/monastary building's exterior will be left unaltered. Only a small percentage of the grapes are grown on the premises - most are a collection from other vineyards in the area. I enjoyed the visit and bought a mixed case of their wines. I would have liked a tour of the winery itself, but it was their busy time and they weren't offering tours that day.

After imbibing in some wine, we hopped into the car (shhhh) and made the short drive to Denver, where we drove all over the place looking at hotels and trying to determine the "bad" parts of town and the "good" parts of town. We ended up in the Westway Motel, which was in the "bad" part of town.

For dinner, we went to Dino's Italian Food in Lakewood, which turned out to be very good. We walked in at about 9:45pm, and were told they were open until 11pm. They even make their own sausage on the premises for the meatballs and links.