August 20

We left Alamosa in the early am. It was in the mid 40sF, our coolest morning on the trip. After a short time we got within sight of Mt Blanca. This peak is taller than Pikes Peak (by about 200') and only 10 miles or so from US 160 (the road we were taking to the east). Better yet, there are no foothills etc. in the way of the view (this image is from here). We continued east and by about noon we were at the Garden of the Gods visitor center (that's us with the garden and Pikes Peak in the background). We had lunch in the Garden (no beer is allowed). The Garden of the Gods website is here - they have lots of other images. After a while we ended up in South Denver and had a last minute invitation to the Chabad rabbi's house for Friday evening. We went to his synagogue for Sabbath morning (we stayed at golf club hotel that was very nice, not expensive, and only a half mile from the synagogue so we could walk - see last image) but there were a few people short a minyan. Still he had a nice kiddush afterword. One member of the near minyan was suspicious that I might be a Boston Red Sox fan. Sheesh. Apparently there have been some obnoxious fans.

Aug 22

We spent the am until about 2 pm with Ramona and Dave Rochlin and Rocky Smith (at R&D's house about 5 miles south of the Denver CBD).

It was nice to catch up with them.

Then we went to the Colorado RR Museum (we were going to go to the Colorado History Museum but it was closed).

The first image is a locomotive that used to be used on the way up the Clear Creek valley - the visitor's center is on the left of the image).

The next image shows a view of the scale model train set which covers about 80' by 80' of space and in the background is the loop train which takes visitors around the grounds.

The third image is of a locomotive that was used to take people up the cog railway that goes to the top of Pikes Peak.


The fourth image is of a locomotive that was used exclusively to haul Coors products up until about 1986.

This probably jinxed us because I had planned to stop at the Denver Breckenridge Brewery but they were closed. Sigh.

We got some beer on the way back to the golf course motel.

Aug 23

We drove to Denver International Airport, returned the rental car (with about 1500 miles on it from our trip).

The security line was bad - it took about 40 minutes to get all the way thru - and we went to BWI and took the shuttle home. We were the last people to depart the shuttle so it took about 90 minutes.