The RV park is about six miles west of town on the banks of the Big Thompson River. It is in the lower reaches of Big Thompson Canyon, which means that there is no Verizon cell phone service in the park. This means no phone and no Verizon internet at the coach. The park does have free Wifi, but it is a little spotty. I did manage to get a satellite signal for the TV, not with the dome on the roof - it was blocked by trees, but with the spare dish we carry. At least we are not completly cut off.
After we got settled in we drove into town to visit Sam’s Club for some things we needed from the “big box” store. We then needed to find a liquor store as our Absolute stock was just about gone. When we priced the big bottle of Absolute in Lamar at one of the local stores it was $39 a bottle. We were worried that because Colorado does not allow sales of liquor in anything other than a liquor store, that the price might be high all over. We found a place called LiquorMax Warehouse just down the street from Sam’s and when we went in we saw Absolute was only $26.99 for the big bottle, about the same as we pay in Costco in California or Arizona. They also had Three Olives, an English vodka that is as good as Absolute, for only $19.99 a bottle. We stocked up and bought two bottles of each. Good prices, happy, happy, joy, joy. After shopping we went back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the evening.
Historically, Loveland is a railroad town. The city was founded in 1877 along the newly-constructed line of the Colorado Central Railroad, near its crossing of the Big Thompson River. It was named in honor of William A.H. Loveland, the president of the Colorado Central Railroad. The city was founded one mile upstream from the existing small settlement of St. Louis, the buildings of which were moved to the site of Loveland. For the first half of the 20th century the town was dependent on agriculture. The primary crops in the area were sugar beets and sour cherries. In 1901, the Great Western Sugar Company built a factory in Loveland, which remained as a source of employment until its closure in 1985. During the late 1920s the Spring Glade orchard was the largest cherry orchard west of the Mississippi River. At that time the cherry orchards produced more than $1 million worth of cherries per year. A series of droughts, attacks of blight and finally a killer freeze destroyed the industry. By 1960 cherries were no longer farmed. In the late 20th century, the economy diversified with the arrival of manufacturing facilities by Hewlett-Packard, Teledyne, and Hach, a water quality analysis equipment manufacturer. A new medical center has added a substantial amount of employment in that sector as well..
Loveland is also the home of the Valentine Re-Mailing Program. For decades people from across the world have sent their valentines to Loveland, Colorado, to be hand-stamped with a cachet and verse, and a specially designed postal cancellation. A new verse and stamp are selected each year through a contest held by the Loveland Chamber of Commerce and residents can submit their poems and artwork to be judged. On average, this program re-mails more than 160,000 cards from the United States and more than 110 countries. Loveland’s Valentine Re-mailing Program has inspired many other Valentine’s Day programs including the Official Loveland Valentine, Miss Loveland Valentine and the Thompson Valley Rotary Heart’s Program. Information on all these programs is available through the Loveland Chamber of Commerce website. The Loveland Chamber of Commerce and the Loveland Post Office sponsor the Loveland Valentine Re-mailing Program.
Loveland’s Valentine Re-mailing Program began in January 1947 by Ted Thompson and Elmer Ivers, the Loveland postmaster after Ivers received about 30 valentines from individuals requesting to have the cards postmarked from Loveland for, “a romantic extra touch.” The two thought re-mailing valentines would be an opportunity to advertise Loveland, and the Loveland Chamber of Commerce agreed to promote the service. Thompson designed a cachet with the message, “A Valentine Greeting from Sweetheart Town, Loveland, Colorado,” and the image was a heart pierced by an arrow over the Rocky Mountains. The cachet was used twice, then Thompson started the tradition of changing it each year at the request of collectors. Since then, a different verse and design have been used every year. End of history lesson.
Saturday, September 3rd, we left the coach after lunch to do some geocaching in Loveland. We had pretty good luck and in about four hours we had found a dozen caches with only one DNF, a cache we couldn’t find. After our caching we spent a little time driving around town sightseeing. We visited Boyd Lake State Park on one of the several large lakes in and around Loveland. The park has campsite facilities, unfortunately, the guy at the guard gate wouldn’t let us in for a quick drive through just to check it out. He wanted us to pay the $8 day use fee. I guess we will never know what the park has to offer.
About 5:00 or so we went to the Loveland Elks Lodge. The lodge is in an old building downtown, one that I would guess was built in the 30's, which was quite nice. Large, three story building with lots of wood, very typical of the older Elks lodges. Like most of the early lodge buildings this one had the dining room and bar on the first floor, the lodge room on the second floor, and apartments on the third floor. Back in the early and mid 1900's many Elks lodges around the country had rooms for rent in their lodges for traveling Elks. Very few still maintain those amenities.
The bar was very nice, with quite a few people having cocktails. They were a very friendly group, including one woman named Anna who came over and sat with us for a while. She told us to be sure to visit the Moose Lodge in Longmont, about 20 miles South, telling us they had a great lodge with great RV parking. We will check it out. We had a couple of cocktails, the lodge bought us one, and got a lodge pin for our banner. This was our first visit to the Loveland lodge. After our lodge visit we made a quick stop at Sam’s Club for a take and bake pizza and then headed home for dinner.
After dinner, about 7:00 or so, a band started playing in the RV park’s pavilion. We had known that they were going to have entertainment both Saturday and Sunday nights. We are parked right behind the pavilion,
so all we had to do was put our chairs behind the coach and we could enjoy the show. The band was very good, four middle aged guys who seemed to really be enjoying themselves. They played mostly oldies and blues. They played until about 9:30 when they shut down the show. There were quite a few people around watching, but considering that this is a large RV park that is completely full, there were not as many as I would expect for a free show. Tomorrow night is supposed to be a rock band.Sunday, September 4th, we woke up to a cold morning for the first time in months. When I got in the car to run out and get a paper about 7:30 the thermometer read 44 degrees. I actually had to turn on the heat pump in the coach to get the chill out. From the 100's to the 40's in the matter of a few days. Amazing.
After lunch we left the coach to chase around for the day. Our first stop was the large outlet mall we had spotted as we got off the freeway for Loveland on Friday. Once we got there we found that at least half of the stores were vacant, but we still spent about two hours wandering around shopping. We each bought a couple of things, but not too much. We generally only buy when there are real bargains. After wandering the outlet mall we did a little more caching in the area. We only spent about 90 minutes or so and found six new caches. We concentrated on those that had travel bugs and managed to drop off four that we had in our possession and got two new ones in exchange. For any new readers not familiar with geocaching, travel bugs are separately trackable items that are placed in caches. Cachers can take the item and then drop it in another cache somewhere else. TB’s, as they are known, have unique serial numbers and are logged and tracked on the same website as the geocaches themselves.
On the way back to the RV park we stopped at an antique mall and found a huge place. It was so big that we only got about half way through before we decided it was time to get back to the coach for happy hour. We will go back sometime over the next few days to finish the place. Unlike a lot of antique malls, most of the stuff in here was reasonably priced. Jackie picked up a nice denim purse and a denim vest, both of which were very well made, both for less than $15. Quite a bargain.
After dinner we walked over to the pavilion again to listen to the music for a little while. The band tonight, the Nitecats, was another local band, three older guys who did a lot of 60's and 70's country and rock. They were pretty good and we enjoyed the music for about an hour. We even got up and danced a little. Again, the turnout seemed poor for a free show in an RV park. Only a few dozen people showed up to watch. I guess most of them could hear the music at their RV’s and didn’t want to go out in the cool weather.
Monday, September 5th, Happy Labor Day. Since we stopped doing labor six years ago, it’s pretty much just another day for us. After lunch we went back out to take advantage of the great weather and do some more geocaching. It was a little warmer today, supposed to be in the low 80's by the end of the afternoon, but still very nice. In the course of about three hours we found another dozen caches with one more DNF added to the list. This brings us to thirty finds in the last three days, not a bad average.
After our caching we went back to the big antique store near our RV park to finish looking around. We spent about an hour there and found a couple of little things we could use for geocaching “bling,” stuff to leave in caches. After the store we went back to the coach for the rest of the evening.
Tuesday, September 6th, we left the coach around noon, after an early lunch, and drove west on US-34 towards the town of Estes Park, Colorado and the Rocky Mountain National Park. We had awakened to cloudy skies and a little drizzle with temperatures in the high 50's. It was 23 miles from our RV park to Estes Park and the road took us from about 5,000 feet elevation to 7,500
elevation in that distance. Much of the road was through Big Thompson Canyon and the middle part of the trip was in a very narrow part of the canyon where it was only wide enough for the river and a two lane road. The canyon walls went straight up a thousand feet and the course of the river was very winding, which made for pretty dramatic scenery. Unfortunately, the clouds and rain made it difficult to get good photos. We arrived in Estes Park in a little under an hour and found a very quaint little mountain town.We continued on through town to one of the entrances to Rocky Mountain National Park, the Beaver Meadows entrance station and visitor’s center. The park actually has two entrances on the west side, one on Highway 34, the other on Highway 36. You can only get to either one through Estes Park, however.
East of town Highway 34 goes to Loveland, Highway 36 goes more southeast to Boulder, Colorado. The two highways meet up a few miles into the park and only Highway 34 continues on through the park. This is the only through road in the park and it comes out at the southwestern corner of the park at the town of Grand Lake. This road is about 46 miles long and is considered the highest continuously paved highway in the country. At it’s highest point the road crosses the tundra above the tree line at 12,180 feet elevation.The park is about 266 thousand acres, or a little over 400 square miles. There are 72 named peaks above 12,000 feet elevation inside the park boundaries. There is also Longs Peak which is the northernmost of the so-called “fourteeners” which are peaks in the Rocky Mountain chain that rise above 14,000 feet elevation. There are 54 fourteeners in Colorado, but this is the only one in the park. The park was created in 1915.
After visiting the Beaver Meadows Visitor’s Center we headed into the park. We spent about four hours driving through the park. It was really unfortunate that there were so many clouds, so much rain and even fog. It obscured what had to be really magnificent views. We only drove about halfway through the park, to the Alpine Visitor’s Center, located at 12,000 feet.
Had we continued on to the Grand Lake entrance we probably wouldn’t have really seen anything more because of the bad weather, so we drove back to Estes Park, exiting the park through the Falls River station. An total we got into four of the five visitor’s centers in the park and got some pretty neat pictures in spite of the rain and clouds. There were even some small glaciers on the side of the mountains up near the Alpine center. We even managed to get a geocache inside the park. The National park system does not allow regular geocaches in the parks, but this one was a virtual, which meant no actual container. We saw a lot of Elk in the park. This area of the country has some of the largest Elk populations and they are all over. This is rutting season (mating)so the big bull Elks have their full rack of antlers,
and they are pretty impressive. We saw large herds of Elk in two different meadows, and we came across a small group right on the side of the road. Very impressive animals. After we finished in the park we went back into Estes Park. We had loaded a whole bunch of caches for Estes Park, but we don’t like caching in the rain and it was still raining when we got back into town.Estes Park was named for Joel Estes, who arrived in the area in 1859 and settled here with his family to raise cattle until 1866 when he moved to seek a more favorable climate. The Homestead Act of 1862 offered up to 160 acres of land for the cost of filing the paperwork if a house was constructed and the property was labored upon. In the 1870s, surveys of Estes Park brought homesteaders to the area who attempted farming, ranching, logging and mining. Most of the early ranchers found it more profitable to become proprietors to the growing number of visitors in the area as words of beauty and adventure reached all the way to Europe. After the 1905 platting of downtown Estes Park, the village thrived and set ground for much of what the town looks like today. Access to the area was vastly increased with the road improvements funded by the Stanley Hotel owner, F.O. Stanley, and the natural surroundings would be protected for posterity with the dedication of Rocky Mountain National Park in 1915. The Town incorporated in 1917.
We drove through town and checked out the Stanley Hotel, which was built by Freelan O. Stanley, the co-inventor of the Stanley Steamer automobile. Stanley came to Estes Park in 1903 and built the hotel just a few years later. It opened on July 4, 1907. The hotel has 178 rooms and it served as the inspiration for Steven King’s novel, The Shining. Many believe the Stanley Hotel
is haunted, having reported a number of cases of ghostly activity, primarily in the ballroom. Kitchen staff have reported to have heard a party going on in the ballroom, only to find it empty. People in the lobby have allegedly heard someone playing the ballroom's piano; employees investigating the music supposedly find nobody sitting at the piano. Employees believe that particular ghost is of Freelan O. Stanley's wife, who used to be a piano player. In one guest room, people claim to have seen a man standing over the bed before running into the closet. This same apparition is allegedly responsible for stealing guests' jewelry, watches, and luggage. Others reported to have seen ghosts in their rooms in the middle of the night, simply standing in their room before disappearing. The hotel is a large white, mostly wooden structure built on the side of a hill and can be seen from all over town. Very pretty building. The town also had one street with about six blocks of neat shops and boutiques, but it was getting late and we wanted to start back down through the canyon to home. We did stop at the town’s visitor center to try and see where the Elks Lodge was located. One of our travel books, an older one,
showed a lodge in Estes Park. However, it seems that the lodge has closed because the lady in the visitor’s center told us there was no Elks Lodge and the newer travel book we had in the car did not show a lodge in town. We then made a quick stop at the KFC to pick up dinner and headed back down the canyon to our RV park. We got home around 6:30 and just stayed in the rest of the night listening to the rain.Wednesday, September 7th, we woke up to more rain. Actually, it had rained most of the night and it didn’t appear that it was going to get any better. We couldn’t go caching in the rain, so we just went out after lunch to do a Wally World run. By the time we got out of the store the rain had tapered off to a heavy mist. We went home and stayed in the rest of the afternoon. According to the local weather, the rain is supposed to move out tonight.
Thursday, September 8th, we finally saw the sun again! After lunch we drove back up into the mountains to Estes Park for some more exploration, this time not in the rain. We split our time between geocaching and walking around the downtown area checking all the little shops.
We also found where the Elks Lodge used to be. The address on Elkhorn Street, the main drag through town, is nothing but an empty foundation. It appears that the building may have burned down, but we couldn't verify that. We ended up getting ten new geocaches and spent most of the afternoon in town. We finally left about 4:30 and went back to the coach for the rest of the night.Friday, September 9th, was a travel day. We only went about 55 miles, south to the city of Westminster, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. We arrived at the Westminster Elks Lodge about noon and were surprised to see the RV park nearly full. The lodge has 44 RV sites, many with full hookups, but there were only a couple of sites open. We were a little surprised being this late in the year. We didn’t get a site with 50 amp or sewer, but we do have water and 30 amp. We will only be here for five days, so we can get along without the sewer connection.
The area that would be Westminster was first settled back in 1858 with the discovery of gold in the area. The land act of 1862 brought even more settlers to the area to make their homesteads. The town had several early names, including DeSpain Junction, Harris, and Darell Park, but it was incorporated in 1911 and given the name Westminster. The name came from Westminster University, a Presbyterian college built in the area in 1893 and opened in 1908. The first building at the university, a large red sandstone building called the Westminster Castle, still stands on the site.
The Westminster Elks lodge is fairly new. It was chartered in 1961 and they built their present building in 1965. After our arrival we phoned some friends of ours, Jim and Jane Easley, who live in nearby Arvada, Colorado, but are members of the Westminster Elks. We met Jim and Jane through our association with the Family Motor Coach Association (FMCA) and our attendance at various rallies over the years. Jim and Jane are security volunteers for FMCA and we see them at most every rally we go to.
The Easley’s came over to our coach about 5:00 and we had a cocktail and caught up on what has been going on since we last saw them in Indio back in January. About 6:00 we went over to the Lodge for dinner. We had a very nice dinner, Chicken Marsala for Jackie and I, and another drink, along with lots of great conversation. Jim and Jane are very nice people and we really enjoyed our visit. We have a lot of mutual friends through FMCA. After dinner we went back to the coach for the rest of the night.
Saturday, September 10th, we went out after lunch to do some caching in Denver. The set of caches that I downloaded for us were all located just southeast of downtown, in the older residential area of the city. Many of the homes in the area appear to be early 1900's construction and were very pretty. It was a very picturesque area and we enjoyed looking at all the buildings, however, it was a real difficult area to cache in. The streets were very narrow and most were one way streets. In addition, apparently many of the homes and apartment buildings did not have off-street parking, because the streets were packed with cars. We had to bypass several caches simply because we could not find a parking place close to the cache. We did finally manage to get ten caches, with a couple of DNFs, by 3:30, and we decided that was enough for the day.
After caching we drove to downtown Denver and the 16th Street Mall. For those not familier with Denver, the 16th Street Mall goes through the middle of downtown and is closed to all vehicle traffic except for buses. The mall is one and a quarter miles long and is lined with stores, shops and restaurants. The entire mall is paved with granite pavers and there are all kinds of street entertainers along the route. The city runs free transit buses up and down the street, making it a very popular place, even for the locals. We spent a little over an hour walking on the mall and enjoying the 78 degree weather. We did a little looking, but didn’t buy anything. After our shopping we headed back to the coach and stayed in the rest of the night.
Denver is the capital of Colorado, the capital building is right near the end of the 16th Street Mall. It’s population is a little over 600,000 and it covers nearly 155 square miles. Denver City was founded
in November 1858 as a mining town during the Pikes Peak Gold Rush in western Kansas Territory. General William Larimer, a land speculator from eastern Kansas, placed cottonwood logs to stake a claim on the bluff overlooking the confluence of the South Platte River and Cherry Creek. Larimer named the townsite Denver City to curry favor with Kansas Territorial Governor James W. Denver. Larimer hoped that the town's name would help make it the county seat of Arapaho County, but unknown to him Governor Denver had already resigned from office. Larimer, along with associates in the St. Charles City Land Company, sold parcels in the town to merchants and miners, with the intention of creating a major city that would cater to new emigrants. Denver City was a frontier town, with an economy based on servicing local miners with gambling, saloons, livestock and goods trading. The Colorado Territory was created in February of 1861and Denver City was incorporated in November of 1861. In 1867, Denver City became the Territorial Capital and shortened its name to just Denver.
Between 1880 and 1895 the city experienced a huge rise in corruption, as crime bosses, such as Soapy Smith, worked side by side with elected officials and the police to control elections, gambling, and the bunko gangs. The city also experienced a depression in 1893 after the crash of silver prices. By 1890, Denver had grown to be the second-largest city west of Omaha, but by 1900 it had dropped to third place behind San Francisco and Los Angeles. Denver has also been known historically as the Queen City of the Plains and the Queen City of the West, because of its important role in the agricultural industry of the high-plains region in eastern Colorado and along the foothills of the Colorado Front Range.
Sunday, September 11th, Patriot Day. Hard to believe that it has been ten years since the attacks on 9/11. I remember Jackie waking me up about 6:30 a.m., my normal “get up for work” time, and telling me that the news was talking about an airplane hitting one of the World Trade Center buildings. By the time we left for work all three aircraft had impacted in New York and Washington. I remember standing in the office of the country club where I worked and watching with all my co-workers as the towers each fell.
This morning’s news coverage was expected, probably necessary, but terribly depressing. We were very glad to be able to go out after lunch to do some geocaching and get away from all the remembrance ceremonies. We did some caching to the east of downtown, in the huge shopping area that has been built where the old Denver International airport, Stapleton Field, used to be. I recall going in and out of Stapleton several times back in the mid 1970's when I was working the Fugitive Division at the Sheriff’s Office in Phoenix. One of our duties was doing prisoner extraditions and we did a lot of flying to other states to pick up wanted people.
We ended up with a total of fourteen new cache finds in the course of a couple of hours, and never had to leave the large shopping area on the site of the old airport. We also took the time to go into a couple of stores in the mall for some shopping. After caching we went back to Westminster and did a little sightseeing. We drove up to the top of the hill on the north side of Westminster and visited the Westminster Castle. I mentioned this place
earlier in the blog as the main building for Westminster University which opened in 1908 and served as the inspiration for the name of the city. The building is still used as a Christian school and is well maintained and very pretty. On the way to the coach after our sightseeing, we stopped in the Elks Lodge for a cocktail. We also picked up a new lodge pin for our banner, which we had neglected to do when we were in the lodge on Friday. We already have one pin from this lodge, but this year is their 50th anniversary and they had a very nice anniversary pin. After our drink we went back to the coach for the rest of the evening.Monday, September 12th, we left the coach around noon and drove north to a small town named Berthoud, Colorado, about 45 miles north of Denver. We went there to visit our friends Doug and Linda Stoudt. Doug and Linda were the assistant wagonmasters, or tailgunners, for our caravan to Alaska in 2009. We really hit it off with them on the trip and they are one of the two couples from that journey that we have stayed in contact with. We last
saw Doug and Linda in Quartzsite, Arizona, back in January. Doug and Linda have a house in the country near Berthoud, which is just south of Loveland. We had tried to get with them while we were in Loveland, but they are in the process of “reorganizing” their house, and were unable to get together while we were up there.We got to their house about 1:00 and found that they have a lovely three story brick home on about 11 acres of land in a very pretty area of rolling hills, pastures and farms. The back of their house looks west to the mountains and they have a perfect view of Long’s Peak, the
tallest peak in the Rocky Mountain National Park, from their deck. We sat out on the deck for a while talking and catching up. We then spent an hour or so looking at pictures from their summer trip to New Zealand and Australia. They are still share holders and employees of Fantasy RV Tours and they took a tour this summer to these places that was two months long. They flew down there and then used small, rented RV’s to tour New Zealand, the northeast coast of Australia, and the outback of Australia. It looked like a fantastic, fun trip.We had a great time visiting with Doug and Linda and hope to see them out on the road sometime in the near future. They have a Monaco Knight with the same floor plan as ours. Theirs is a year newer and a different color scheme, but other than that very similar. Their son is moving into their home in Berthoud, which will enable them to spend more time on the road without having to worry about the house and grounds being maintained. They will keep a couple of bedrooms for their use when they are at home. That is the reorganization that I mentioned. Doug showed me the family car collection while we were there. He has a 1950 Chevy that is almost completely original. It has new paint, but the interior and all the mechanicals are original. He just sold it, but it was still in the drive for me to look at. His son has an 80's model Rolls-Royce that is in decent shape, an older Jaguar sedan, and a 65 Mustang that needs some work. I climbed into the back seat of the Rolls for a moment, just so I could say that I sat in the back of a Rolls. All in all, an impressive collection.
About 4:30 we left Doug and Linda’s to head down to Longmont, Colorado, about seven miles south of their house. We wanted to go to the Moose Lodge there to see it, and see Anna, the lady we met at the Loveland Elks Lodge last week. She was the one who told us that the Moose Lodge in Longmont was spectacular. She also told us that it had great RV parking, so we wanted to check it out. We arrived at the Moose, which is on the north end of town, and did find a very large building with a huge parking lot. While there is a lot of room for RV parking, we didn’t see any formal hookup sites. There were a couple of RVs parked there, but they were dry camping.
We went inside and were disappointed to find that Anna was not there. We did stay at the bar and have a couple of drinks. The bar was very big and very nice, probably the nicest Moose lodge we have visited in the few months that I have been a member. The place was very full for Monday night football and the people were very friendly. The bartender rang the bell behind the bar and announced us to everyone as visitors. We had a very nice chat with an older guy at the bar who was a past Governor for the lodge and also held offices at the state level. The Governor is the head guy of a Moose lodge, similar to the Exalted Ruler of an Elks. He also told us a story of being selected to serve on the National Council for the Moose, which would have resulted in his eventually becoming the Governor General of the Order, the top office. He didn’t take them up on it because he didn’t want to spend three years traveling around the country. This was a very nice Moose lodge and we enjoyed our visit.
After the Moose lodge we went to the south end of town and visited the Longmont Elks Lodge. This lodge is still in the original early 1900's building which was very typical Elks style architecture. The inside was very ornate and had a very nice bar and clubroom. The Lodge room was on the top floor and took up most of the floor. It was nice, but not overly elaborate. No stained glass or guilt ceilings, but a very nice, dignified room nonetheless. They also had a huge ballroom on the bottom floor which you could look down into to from the second floor clubroom through big windows. This bar was not nearly as busy as the one at the Moose, but the bartender was pretty friendly. We had one cocktail, got our lodge pin, and then headed out to go home. We got out of the lodge right at sunset and by the time we got to Westminster is was 7:30 and dark.
Since it was so late we decided to stop and get something to eat before going home. Jackie checked her Bing application on her phone and found a Mexican restaurant located just a couple miles from the Westminster lodge, that had four stars on it’s listing. We stopped there and found that the food was, indeed, excellent. We both had the special, which was a “super burrito” and you could get it with any kind of stuffing. She got grilled chicken, I had shredded beef. Both were wonderful. They were smothered in green chili sauce with lots of lettuce and tomatoes. The chips and salsa were also good, as was the service. The total meal for both of us was under $20. The name of the place is Rosita’s Mexican Restaurant, and it is located on Federal Boulevard near 81st Avenue, in Westminster. I would highly recommend this to anyone who likes Mexican food and finds themselves in the north part of the Denver metro area. After dinner we went back to the coach for the rest of the evening.
Tuesday, September 13th, we left the coach about 11:30 so we could go do lunch at one of the several Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives (Triple D) restaurants in Denver. Triple D is a show on the Food channel
with chef Guy Fieri that we watch all the time. We like to try places that Fieri has visited. We decided on a place called The Bagel Deli on the south side of Denver. From the outside it doesn’t look like too much, a smallish place in a strip mall. When we went in the place was packed, but fortunately, a table opened up just as we came in. The food was outstanding. I ordered the Reuben with fries and when it came I was shocked. Jackie even took a photo of the sandwich. It had to be five inches thick, stacked with corn beef and kraut. It tasted as good as it looked too. Jackie had eggs Benedict, which she said were just OK. They didn’t come out real hot and she likes her food hot. We also ordered the sampler platter that had
a sample of each of the three dishes that Fieri tried when he did the show there. It had some matza ball soup, a beef knish, and a small piece of kishke. The matza ball was very good, the knish, a small meat filled pastry, was tasty but a little dry, and the kishke was outstanding. The kishke, which they make without the trademark sausage skin, tasted like stuffing. I took half of my sandwich and most of my fries home with me, which is very unusual for me. There was just too much food, and it was not expensive either. All of the food we had was less than $35.After lunch we went to a couple of animal shelters to look at kitties. We have been talking about getting a second cat. We had two cats when we first sold the house and took off on the road, but the older one died after less than a year. Smokey is a good companion cat, but he is not cuddly and Jackie wants a cuddly lap cat. Smokey is also getting older, he just turned eleven this year, although he probably still has a good five or six years on him. He doesn’t exactly have a tough life. We went to a non profit, no-kill shelter that only had cats first and walked around checking out the cats. This was one of the type where the cats are just all running loose in various rooms so you can go in and interact with them. We spent about an hour in there, but just couldn’t find one that really struck us as a good fit.
After the first shelter we went to another that was much more upscale and formal. This one had all types of animals, but they were all inside of locked rooms where you could see them through the glass and read the information about each one on a placard, but you couldn’t interact with them.
You had to write the number of the animal you were interested in on a card, give to a worker, and then they would take you to a room and bring the animal in for you to interact with. We didn’t find anything we really liked here either, and these animals were much more expensive. Kittens were $120 and older cats were $50. We were going to do some caching, but by the time we got done with the animal shelters it was getting late in the afternoon, so we went home for the rest of the day. This place had a very cute bronze statue out in front.Wednesday, September 14th, was another travel day. We packed up the coach and left the Westminster Elks about 10:00. We are still heading south, this time to a town called Monument, a suburb of Colorado Springs. We only had about 70 miles to travel, although we did have to make a fuel stop. The weather has really turned, it was gray and overcast and the high temperatures was supposed to only be in the 50's. We arrived at the Colorado Heights RV Resort about noon and managed to beat the predicted rain. We even got completely set up before the rain hit about 2:00.
We are going to be here in Monument for two weeks. This is one of our membership parks and seems to be a very nice place, although it is at 7,300 feet elevation so Jackie will have to watch her breathing. This also seems to be a good place to close out this chapter of the blog. I will publish again in a week or two. Until the next time, remember that out time on this earth is finite. There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important thing. Bye.
