Tuesday, June 5, 2007

"Up on Cripple Creek"




This is Cripple Creek, Colorado on August 3, 2004. That's not snow it's ice! All day as we drove upwards through the Rocky Mountains we saw dark storm clouds in the distance. I thought it was thunder clouds.

About ten miles from our camp site, it started to spit ice and as we pulled in to register it came down even harder. As we were filling out the paperwork my wife mentioned the weather and asked if it was normal. The lady told her that every afternoon this time of year it rained, snowed or iced each day. Her husband told us that summer fell only on July 4th.

After hooking up the water, electric and sewer I went in and touched off the furnace.

I miss traveling in our motorhome. Each day is different and you never know what you'll find along the way. We bought a book titled "The Next Exit" which did just that. It told us about gas,eating, shopping camp sites and local attractions. You just go to whatever state you are in and look up the route number and exit. This book and billboards helped us find neat places like
1886 Town, the Great Divide Sky Ride, Lou Tauber's Western Clothing in Casper, Wyoming (bought my cowboy boots here) and Flaming Gorge. On the way to see Holister, California, we made a wrong turn and found one of the original Spanish Missions. It was beautiful.

We've bought rattle snake skin wallets, and key chains with rattle snake heads, a hunting knife with snake skin pummel and sheath, handmade Native American jewelry, sand paintings and in Felton, California just north of Santa Cruz I bought a hand carved redwood bear. The list of useless things goes on but they're wonderful memories of road trips.

Some where in Iowa we stopped at an Indian casino that was surrounded by 1000's of aces of corn. It looked bizarre. It was also mandatory to stop in Wendover, Nevada ( I call it bend over) and Reno and Las Vegas. But my all time special Nevada stop was Winnemucca. One place outside of Nevada that I love to gamble is Deadwood, South Dakota. Kevin Costner owns a casino and hotel named The Midnight Star that's really nice. It's sports bar had excellent food but it was slow. We learned how to play 3 card poker here since they do not have craps in South Dakota.

Cracker Barrel Restaurants were our favorite food stops. We also would look for truck stops and diners with a lot of trucks, especially for breakfast. I tried a lot of different things to eat across the US. I had Elk and Buffalo steak, rattlesnake, fish burritos, the biggest freak'n omelet I've ever seen, the hottest habanajo peppers and my all time favorite was at a barb-b-q at our son's in Santa Cruz where he served home made grilled ham & cheese, jalopeno pepper and chedder cheese filled sausages.

I think the trips were just an under cover freeding frenzy. I sure miss it!

1 comment:

Nick Marino said...

" A young Nick Marino". That just joggled my memory. What ever happened to my shoulder holster? Gotta be somewhere!

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