Listing Through Life

We decided to get away for a few days and explore a part of Colorado we hadn’t yet seen. After stopping at the local Panera for bagels, we drove south on I-25 to Walsenburg. The tire light on the Honda’s dashboard was lit up, no doubt because temperatures had dropped considerably overnight. We stopped at a truck stop and paid $1.50 for five minutes of air. I didn’t use it all, but I was tempted to stand there holding the nozzle until our time ran out. Why should they get to keep air I paid for?

We headed west on Route 160, past the Spanish Peaks. It is a notable feature of this part of the state that the peaks rise suddenly out of the flat plains.

We toured the Fort Garland Museum in the morning. The town of Fort Garland was a surprise to me. I don’t know why, but I expected an actual town — like Monte Vista or Alamosa, which we drove through later. It was, in fact, a tiny place. I drove from end to end in less than a minute. After we finished at the fort, I pulled off at a rather ramshackle gift shop/tourist trap. The grounds were covered with a dilapidated attempt at recreating an old-fashioned western town. We wandered around inside the gift shop for a bit. I asked the woman who worked there the price of some Navajo rugs. She told me the small one was $800 and the larger one $1,400. She took my question as intent to buy and followed me around for several minutes and pointed out other items and telling me the price. She impressed upon us that her prices were much lower than we would find in Taos, and that people from New Mexico come to her. Perhaps. It didn’t appear that much of anybody had come there in some time. We didn’t buy any rugs, but it made me rethink our decision to let our cats tear apart the ones we inherited from my folks.

It was lunchtime, so we drove about 30 yards to the only restaurant in town, the Old West Cafe. We had cheeseburgers, which weren’t bad. The other diners were obviously locals. Our waitress had on a T-shirt that she was very proud of. It said, “Sometimes I laugh so hard the tears run down my leg.” When I asked, she told me where we might see wild horses in the area, but we didn’t see any. We did see Blanca Peak, a 14er in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

We spent the afternoon at Colorado Gators Reptile Park.

In the late afternoon, we visited Monte Vista and drove the short auto tour at the Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge. But this wasn’t the prime time of year to visit. Most of the water had been drained and the “wetlands” had been control burned recently.

There were a couple puddles, and we saw a handful of ducks and a flock of Long-billed Dowitchers, the first I’ve seen in 17 years. I don’t think we were in the refuge for a half hour. We did see a large flock of Sandhill Cranes in a mowed field just east of Monte Vista.

Our plan was to eat dinner at a highly-rated BBQ place called Smokin’ Johnnies, but when we found it, it was out of business. It was next door to a Best Western and a drive-in theater. The Best Western advertised that you could watch movies on the outdoor screen from their rooms. But we thought the whole set-up looked like a setting for a horror movie.

Since BBQ was out, we decided to go to a burrito joint in Alamosa, but it was also closed. We ended up at Chili’s where we ate too much. When we were done, it was only 6:00 or so, and we had only an evening in a Hampton Inn room to look forward to. To pass the time, we wandered around Wal-Mart. Really.

This was the view from our motel room the next morning. We had looked at the movies showing at that theater the night before. They were so unappealing that we preferred sitting in our room.

We drove to Alamosa National Wildlife Refuge first thing, hoping to see something interesting. The tour road there wasn’t long either. We did see some ducks, two Sandhill Cranes, and a Coyote.

The Sangre de Cristo Mountains loomed large to the northeast. The highest point is Blanca Peak.

After touring Great Sand Dunes National Park, we headed north to Salida (which Siri interpreted as “Saliva”). We were hungry. For lunch, we’d only had bagels that we’d purloined from the hotel breakfast.

But we weren’t this hungry.

After driving through Bighorn Sheep Canyon, I took my wife to see Route 11 up to Cripple Creek. I’d happened upon the road back in 2012 when I was out here for a convention and thought it was beautiful. As we drove through Cripple Creek, the sun set. For a couple minutes, the sky was orange and the mountains were deep purple. We got home at 7:00 after two filled and fun days.

Pizzeria Rustica, in Old Colorado City, is supposed to be one of the best restaurants in Colorado Springs. We finally made it on a Tuesday evening after doing some shopping.

It’s not a large place, at least not in the cooler months when the outdoor patio isn’t open. Our table was jammed between the kitchen, the drink station, and another table. When we first got there, it wasn’t crowded.

But soon four ladies were sat at the next table, and the closest one was much nearer to me than my wife was. They weren’t obnoxious, but they talked loudly enough to make conversation between the two of us awkward.

My wife ordered the Rustica, with “crushed San Marzano tomatoes, house-made mozzarella and gran padano parmesan topped with prosciutto di parma and fresh arugula.” I know what about half of those words mean.

I had the Formaggi e Pollo with “5 cheeses, crushed san marzano tomatoes, local chicken/tomato/basil sausage, red onion, pistachio, rosemary.” Yes, it actually had pistachios on it.

Neither of them were bad, but they weren’t pizza by our standards. We decided we’d probably not make an effort to return, more because of the tight seating than because of disappointment with the food. We allowed our friendly server to talk us into some ordinary desserts.

Franco’s Italian Deli is one of the few things I miss about Illinois. It’s located about three miles from my old work. For the last year or so I worked there, I would head to Franco’s at least once a month.

It isn’t a fancy place. And it isn’t expensive. But it’s amazing.

I always get the smoked ham and Swiss. The key to a good sandwich is good bread, and theirs was the best. I always buy a couple cheese sticks — a flaky pastry with raspberry or cinnamon flavoring and a powder sugar dusting. It’s been more than a year since I’ve been there. It was just as good as always.

We were in Denver, the weather was lousy and forecasted to get worse. We spent the afternoon at the aquarium.

We were hungry when we arrived, so we went to the restaurant first. We had to wait 45 minutes for a table, I guess because they were short of staff. They certainly weren’t short on empty tables. This was the view from ours.

We waited a long time for our server to show up, and then a long time before our food arrived. This gave us plenty of time to watch the fish in the large tank nearby. My wife ordered fried chicken. I had a noodle dish with shrimp and chicken. Both of us thought the chicken was tasteless, but the rest of the food was good — except for the pile of weeds on top of mine that just didn’t go with anything else.

Halfway through our meal, a mermaid showed up in the next tank down. Her show lasted maybe five minutes. She would rest at the surface for a minute or so, then dive down, circle, and swim back up. I haven’t tried swimming with my legs stuck together in a rubber tail, so I can’t really complain. Although if I tried, it would give the diners something to remember.

The meal was expensive. Unless you have a strong desire to watch mermaids while you eat, I wouldn’t recommend going. If you do, avoid the chicken.

The aquarium was crowded. All the exhibits were along a single aisle that wound around the building and got pretty narrow in places. We had to make a serious commitment to block other people if we wanted to see any one thing for more than a minute or so. We took our time as best we could and saw everything — patiently waiting and enduring loud OPKs.

We had a very good time. We saw several interesting and beautiful creatures. We were allowed to touch swimming rays. They’re slimy. The Sumatran Tiger looked smaller than the Bengal Tigers I usually see in zoos, and it had longer facial hair. When we finished, we walked outside to the 4D Theater. It was raining, and we had to stand under an awning in the cold, damp wind until the previous showing was over. We’d paid to see a movie on the gannets, sharks, dolphins, and whales that feed off the sardine schools in the Indian Ocean off South Africa. When the doors opened and we headed inside, we found out that the show we wanted alternated with one about Legos. We didn’t want to stand outside for another 15 minutes, so we asked the attendant if we could see both. Since there were so few people there for the Lego show, she said we could. She gave us pink glasses as we entered.

The Lego movie was stupid. In addition, to even begin to understand it, you had to have seen the Lego movie. We hadn’t. The 4D effect consisted of five things — seats that shook, blasts of air on our necks, bubbles that floated up from the front of the theater, a sharp jab in the back, and sprits of water (that I didn’t feel, but my wife said she did.) These rotated throughout the show with little or no connection to anything that was happening on screen. The blasts of air were frequent and particularly annoying.

The predator movie was more interesting, but the effects seemed to rotate through in the same order and frequency, again with little connection to anything on screen. The blasts of air on my neck while a dolphin swam through the ocean were hard to figure out.

It was teeming rain when we left, and we were drenched by the time we got to the car. It was a long, stressful drive home on a crowded Interstate with near-blinding rain at times.

As for the aquarium, we both enjoyed it. If we’re ever with someone who wants to see it, we’d go back, although we probably won’t visit by ourselves. But we’ll skip the 4D theater and the restaurant.