She Did Something

I can’t say I wasn’t happy to leave Limon, especially since leaving Limon meant we were, at least for a little while, back to my EXCELLENTLY GOOD PLAN instead of Jim’s somewhat less than excellently good plan. Our next exploration stops were Empire, Georgetown, and Silver Plume in Colorado. These are all places I had heard about from my brother and Linda Rizzardi and had always wanted to visit. I have a habit of picturing places in my mind and pre-forming concepts about them. I have to say that these tiny towns epitomize the Colorado I’ve always pictured and wanted to see. They are all places that I could see myself living in.

We stopped at Jenny’s Restaurant in Empire for a cup of coffee and some talk with Sue who was working there. Linda Rizzardi had told me quite a bit about the whole area and some of the colorful people who lived there. Sue and I talked for a bit about Linda and my brother Andy.

Jim wanted to know how to get to Georgetown and Silver Plume and Sue told us that you had to get back on I-70 to get anywhere…unless you wanted to walk. We saw bighorn sheep as we were getting back on I-70.

I don’t think Jim believed Sue when she told us about I-70 because once we got to Georgetown, he insisted on trying this little road to get to Silver Plume. Needless to say, it didn’t work out and while I kept telling him that Sue said to get back on I 70, he insisted that we stop at the Georgetown Visitor’s Center to ask. Of course, he left me to do the asking and since I already knew we had to get back on I-70, I asked the woman who answered me to “please tell my husband that because he doesn’t believe me”. She did. We got back on I-70.

Silver Plume is a tiny little old mining town. It had some great old houses, an old single cell jail, and surprisingly, several open businesses. We traveled every street in under 7 minutes, but they were exciting minutes. The photo below was taken between Georgetown and Silver Plume.

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We spent several hours wandering around Georgetown, Empire and Silver Plume before heading down to Pueblo, CO for the night. This wasn’t an uneventful drive, however. Somewhere around Colorado Springs, traffic got really heavy and was pretty much stop and go. There we were at a dead stop in the right hand lane when the left lane started moving forward. Hearing a lot of yelling we looked and saw a car full of college aged girls signaling wildly. Jim opened his window to see what they wanted and a girl in the back seat started yelling “I’m from Vermont” excitedly. I guess we were the first northeasterners she’d seen.

Well as traffic jams go, sometimes we were ahead in our lane and sometimes they were ahead in theirs, but lots of conversation took place between Jim and these young girls. At some point, Jim reached behind my seat and pulled out one of the jugs of the maple syrup we were bringing as gifts to my brother, nephew and nieces and held it up. The girl shouted across “Is that Vermont maple Syrup?” Jim answered:  “No. New York!” The girl answered: “Vermont is better.” and pointing to the others in her car said “They’ve never even tasted real maple syrup”. Jim, in his infinite generosity said:  “Do you want it.” The girl said yes and there we were, driving down I-25 with Jim swerving closer, holding out a jug of syrup, while the girl leaned half her body out the window to grab it. Did I mention that my husband is kind of strange?

Now, I’m stuck trying to figure out what to give my brother when we visit. He isn’t getting maple syrup.

We finally got to Pueblo, Colorado where Tomm, The Weekend Guy at the Hampton Inn happily posed with Jim’s duck.

I forgot to mention in the last post that I saw oil pumps for the first time while driving through Kansas. This brought on a big discussion with Jim and a phone call to my son so that he could Google alternate names for oil pumps. It was Jim’s assertion that an oil pump is called a “Nodding Jenny” If anyone can confirm this, I’d be happy to hear about it and I’m sure Jim would enjoy saying “I told you so”. He’s that kind of guy. I’m going to continue to call it an oil pump thingy until it’s proven otherwise.

I’m really trying to come up with nice stuff to say about Limon, Colorado. This post might take a wee bit longer for me to write than any of the others to date.

Limon is a very odd little place. The town’s web site says it’s the “Gateway to Denver, Mountains, Colorado Springs & the Pikes Peak Region”. I’m thinking there are probably some better gateways, but Limon is good for at least one thing. It’s just about the furthest one would want to drive before finding a place to stay when coming from Lawrence, KS. Keep in mind that this is only true if one is following someone else’s (who shall remain nameless because he’s getting kind of touchy) less than excellently good plan to drive through northern Kansas.

Limon’s streets are very wide and I think there were only six of them. At least that’s all we really found. We did find a grocery store to pick up some assorted junk food for the motel room. Also shopping that night was a family of grandmother, mother, and boy around 6 years old. Jim and I were looking at “dead dates” on some snacks when I heard the little boy say “I have to pee!” to which the mother answered “you’ll have to wait”. A few minutes later the boy asked his mother to buy some kind of candy. She told him he didn‘t need that and to put it back to which he answered “fine, whatever, then I’ll just pee here!” A few seconds later, I heard the mother say “put that thing away! We don’t pee in the grocery store!”

Jim and I left the store with just some cheese, pepperoni and crackers, but we laughed all the way back to the Comfort Inn where we were staying. The motel was a bit run down and tired, but it did have somewhat comfortable beds and clean rooms. It also had a window that opened and Jim was overjoyed even if I was freezing my butt off and there was no screen on the window. The window had a beautiful view of the grayest landscape and decrepit trailers behind the motel.

The town had a pretty decent looking Heritage Museum Complex. It was closed when we got there, but Jim enjoyed looking at some of the old farm machinery and I did enjoy looking at the old trains.

Kansas was not at all what I expected. Apparently Northern Kansas is a lot hillier than southern Kansas and although my plan took us through southern Kansas, Jim’s didn’t. He wanted to see Prairie Village where he and his parents lived in the late 60’s. This meant we skirted Kansas City which I really wanted to see and I almost started sulking again but quickly got over it because it was more fun to watch how frustrated Jim got about the area changing so much in 40 some years. There’s nothing like when he gets on one of his “when I was a kid” kicks…not that he was actually a kid when they lived there.

The apartment complex looked exactly the same as it did when Jim lived there. At least he said it did. I’d never seen it before and I don’t always trust his memory so I took a couple of pictures so his parents can verify.

He even let me take a photo of him outside the clubhouse though he did lament that they took “his” pool table out of the clubhouse. This is such an unusual occurence that I figure he must have just been very numbed by all the driving.

It really amazes me that so many people are so willing to pose for duck photos. The guy in Lawrence Kansas seemed almost excited to do it. It shows on his face too.

Now for the really important stuff about Kansas. As I said before, the northern part isn’t as flat as I thought it would be and it has an awful lot of cows. The cows in Kansas, I am positive, are the laziest cows in all the states I’ve been to so far. (I really need to get an accurate count on the states I’ve been to…maybe I’d better go make one of those maps with the pins on them soon.). I would say 90% of them were just laying down in the fields. The other 10% were hanging out under billboards. I’m not sure what that was about but I think they were plotting something.

A nice part of northern Kansas was the Flint Hills area. They were just very unusual looking grassy hills. I didn’t get any pictures (mostly because they have a pretty high speed limit in Kansas and by the time I get ready to shoot, the thing I wanted to take a picture of is gone), but the gently rolling grasslands and the play of shadow and light was amazing. I really do recommend anyone visiting that area of the country take a drive through this area.