Air Force Academy - Colorado Springs, Colorado

The Visitor Center at the Academy is open to the public

but the lines to get in to the base are long.

It is a huge complex, and a treat to see it all.

The scenery is beautiful and it is thrilling to understand some of their 

rigorous training.

THE CHAPEL

The main reason  I wanted to see the chapel at the Academy was because our family drove to Colorado Springs every Easter Sunday for church at this chapel

These are internet pictures.  

Today the chapel in 'under cover' for renovations that will last for 5 more years!

This is today's picture of the chapel.

What a disappointment!

"I could fly my glider here at the Air Force Academy"!😊

Look carefully at the upper left hand corner

there's his plane.  

(Video is on Facebook)

And a good landing.

This plane was meant for ground combat, but had it's first air- to- air victory 

shooting down an Iraqi helicopter.

The Thunderbirds ended their demo flights with this aircraft when there was a tragic accident in 1982.  

This was a beautiful day on the Academy grounds.

Florissant, Colorado - Is this trip our "Fossil Trip"? (Florissant Fossil National Monument)

 

We stayed at a Harvest Host Campground

(between Breckenridge and Colorado Springs)

This is the Florissant Grange.  Apparently the Grange is a fraternal organization, primarily for the farmers and ranchers in rural areas.  

The property is a former schoolhouse from 1887.

There are 35 Grange members, 3 of them are 91 years old and attended this school.

Lovely evening with music and pot luck dinner with other Grange members.

Among the Grange activities are a weekly music/pot-luck get together.

They also have classes (art, pine needle basket weaving, gourd making) on a regular basis. It is a surprisingly "together" community for the rural folks.

Then, the fossils.  

This is the quarry that is open to the public for personal "fossil hunting"

For $15 an hour per person, they give you a box of rocks (shale) 

and the tools to find fossils.

Primarily a razor blade and kitchen knife to split the layers!

Our 'catch' was primarily leaves and sticks.

Not nearly as much fun as the fish from Wyoming.

The landscape in this area is mostly flat, some rolling hills.

They say that the forest was covered with Redwoods.

Imagine that - a Redwood forest covered this now flat landscape.

Many petrified wood stumps of redwood have been uncovered and are a part of the National Monument.

The "Mother Tree" had these three 'babies'

Breckenridge, CO - Boomtown from mining to skiing

A beautiful summer day in the now very touristy town of Breckenridge.

A free gondola ride to the top of the mountain to see all the summer activities.

Kids 'learning the ropes'

Alpine slides are in most of the ski towns now.

Always love the Colorado Columbines

And then the history - we always try to get the story.

                            Survival in an isolated town.
 

The winter of 1898 had snow of 20 feet.

The “supply chain” was blocked for 78 days

 by the snow on the railroad tracks with snow drifts as high as 50 feet.

                            The Legendary High Line 

Train completed in 1884 from Denver to Breckenridge to Leadville, and crossed the Continental Divide twice.

The journey that had taken days by stagecoach or mule train could be done in about 12 hours.

These towns were no longer isolated from the outside world.

During the snow storms, the engineers would first try “bucking” to get thru the snow (moving forward thru the drift, then back again). 

 

When that failed, they would bring on the rotary snowplow (like a giant snowblower) to try to get thru. 

If that failed the townspeople would come out and shovel by hand.

Then in the BIG SNOW, all efforts failed for 78 days.

Lou examining the rotary engine.

Strawberry Park Natural Hot Springs -Perhaps my favorite

This might be called a "Hippie Hot Springs".

They have a lot of pools, built into the side of the river with hot waters 

gushing out of the rocks.

The entry caboose

This water is REALLY hot.

There are several pools as  the river drops.

 

They have built several attractive buildings that blend in so well with the landscape.

A great soak

(and the weather was cooler than it had been!)

A very pleasant day near Steamboat Springs, Colorado

 

"FINDING YOUR ROOTS". What a surprise!

 

As a kid, I always heard the story of how my grandmother (on my dad's side) survived the Spanish Flu and cared for others as she worked in the hotel of this tiny town of Maybell Colorado.

Lou and I drove thru here on the way to Steamboat Springs, and chatting with the lady at the store, I found that the population of the town was 72.

She said that there was indeed a hotel down the street.  ( I left out the part that my grandmother washed endless sheets at the hotel as all fought the flu epidemic.)

Date of our travel - July 22, 2022 

---------

MUSEUM OF THE NORTHWEST

CRAIG COLORADO

We like to visit museums along our travels, and this one was exceptional.

As I was looking at the display of Maybell, Colorado

I really wondered why in the world my grandmother ended up in this remote part of western Colorado.  The displays validated that Maybell was indeed 30 miles past the end of the railroad in Craig, Colorado 

(and why was she working in a hotel there??)

We ended up chatting with the director of the museum, and he volunteered to look up information for me, asking for my grandmothers name (Iva Evans) he came up with lots of the newspaper articles, said yes, indeed, there was an Evans Hotel in that time frame.  Today it is called the 

Victory Hotel (the main street thru the town is called Victory), 

and there is the "Victory Highway" to celebrate the end of World War I and was the first transcontinental highway from San Francisco to New York.

Just think - 100 years between the two pictures!

I had read that many came to this area to homestead, and the director came up with this document.

I never knew they were homesteading this land (1925).

This stop in the Craig museum  revealed much family history on my fathers side.  I never had any idea that they had homesteaded in this area and that the stories I had heard  of my grandmother washing sheets in the hotel were validated with the knowledge that they built and owned the hotel during the flu.

The town of Craig has the (dubious) distinction of utilizing one of the last running stagecoaches  (1915). 

Stagecoaches were in use in this tiny northwest corner of Colorado until 1915.

The journey to Steamboat Springs or Craig  would take 2 long days over non-improved and rarely maintained trails.  While their skinny wheels supporting sometimes well over 2,000 pounds, stagecoaches were notorious for becoming stuck and were prone to tipping over.  Frequently, paying passengers would become free labor.

The railroad ended in Craig and the new "Stage Coach" completed the 30 miles to Maybell.

Other Museum Findings

Lindberg did a tour in the US to promote air travel.

Craig was lucky to receive this message thrown from the plane.

People gathered on a Saturday morning in 1927 with rumors of a Lindberg sighting. After a hard U turn, the plane nearly clipped the rooftops, made a hard bank directly above the crowd, and the observers viewed the most famous person in the world, as he threw the declaration of support out the window.

We always have to include the air history from these museum visits.

They boast:

"The Worlds Largest Watercolor"

Last but not least:

Could this be the "World's largest Dinosaur Footprint"?

The dinosaur footprint was found hanging from the ceiling of a coal mine---

A most intriguing day!