Bent's Old Fort

Holy smokes.  I can't believe this happened again.  It seems that I rely too much on what people tell me when I call about places to visit and I take the internet for its word...when will I ever learn?

Case #1
Last year we went to  Southern Colorado over Labor Day.  We had a great trip and one of the places we visited was the Last Chance Mine in Creede.  The owner of the mine said that he was going to have a whole new portion of the mine opened up for the tour "in the spring".  Mark really wanted to see it again so we planned on going again this past weekend.  On the Thursday before we left Parker, I called them and asked if they were open and whether or not the new portion of the mine was open and I was assured that it was, including the "Amethyst Room".  Well hot diggity dog!  That's exactly what we were wanting to see.  

So we made our way down south again.  When we arrived in South Fork (conveniently around lunchtime) we stopped by his Grandma Graves' old malt shoppe. She owned this place about 50 years ago and it is still in business! When we were there in the fall it had already closed down for the season so we weren't able to eat there then. But it was open and we couldn't pass up the opportunity to have lunch at his grandma's shop. Mark had hoped that they still had the corn dogs that she was so famous for but there was none on the menu.  But we did share a chocolate shake that Mark said was "nearly as good" as the ones his grandma used to make.

At the malt shoppe

So up the mountain we went.  When we got to the mine and were checking in, the guy who owns it asked if we were first time visitors or repeat customers. We explained that we were repeat visitors and we specifically had come to see the "new room and the amethyst room".  He said,"thanks for coming again" and took our admission fee.  So the tour goes on and is exactly the same as it was in the fall.  And then he started leading us out of the mine.  When we realized that the tour was over we asked him when were going to see the new additions and he sheepishly said that he wasn't "quite ready for that this summer" but "it should be ready by the end of the summer".  I was completely gobsmacked (good English word) and I told him that we had called earlier in the week and had specifically asked whether the tour of the new cave and the amethyst room was open and I was reassured that they were AND reminded him that we had specifically stated that we were there to see the new rooms when we checked in with HIM!!! I asked him why he didn't he didn't tell us that it wasn't part of the tour and he just shrugged his shoulders and walked off. Grrrr.  I don't believe we will be making another trip to the mine.

Strike 1.

It says Danger Keep Out

Not quite sure what all of these mannequins were doing at the entrance to the mine

#2
Since that was a bust we decided to go see some dinosaur tracks.  We had heard about this place called Picketwire Canyon that is supposed to have the best dinosaur tracks in Colorado.  And since we were only about 2 hours away we thought, why not?  So I got on the computer and looked up what we could do.  It stated that to get to the tracks it is a 5.5 mile hike into the canyon and that they do NOT recommend doing it in the summer.  BUT there was an auto-tour that you could do if you had a 4X4 vehicle.  Well guess what?  We have one.  So we drove over to the National Park and asked the Nice Ranger Lady where to start the tour.  She just laughed and said that all the tours were over for the spring but we could sign up for one of the ones in the fall.  I must have looked pretty stupidly at her because she started talking very slowly when she was explaining that the auto-tour was a tour that you are guided through the canyon by the Park Ranger using your AUTO.  Um.... I thought it was auto like you did the tour yourself.  I guess maybe I thought it might have said Ranger-guided tour or some crap like that.  But at this point I guess I was grasping at straws to make this trip worth while.  
Strike 2. 

Creede Colorado

However, all was NOT lost. The lovely Ranger Lady suggested that we go see Bent's Old Fort that was about 6 miles from the Ranger station.  We have seen the sign for Bent's as we have driven along I-25 but had never thought to go to it.  We have been to The Fort, a restaurant in Denver, that is built to look like Bent's Old Fort so we decided to give it a go.  I mean we had to do something, anything worthwhile to save this trip. So we headed over to Bent's Old Fort.  (Click on the words Bent's Old Fort for more info if you're interested) Well, we would say that this was a win for 2 reasons: #1 is was open and #2 this place was pretty interesting.  The tour guide we had was really funny and he didn't just tell the history of the place; he also dropped little anecdotes about life in the fort and about the people who lived there. 

Fortunately we didn't have any other issues with the rest of the trip and we chalked this one up in the "win" category!

Napa and San Francisco

So this trip we just took to Napa and San Francisco was about a year in the making. Last summer Joyce and I were talking about their impending 30th wedding anniversary and what they were planning on doing and during that phone call we decided that it would be fun if we could all celebrate it together. In talking, Joyce mentioned that they had always wanted to go to Napa and San Francisco and I said that we had talked about it as well so we decided to make it happen.
We all flew into San Francisco on Sunday and drove up to Napa because that's where we were spending the next several days.  We had arranged for a private tour of Napa on Monday and ended up going to 5 boutique vineyards on Monday.  It was the best way to do Napa as far as we were concerned.  The driver had taken care of all of the reservations and did all of the driving so we didn't even need to have one of us be the DD (even though Mark doesn't drink wine). 

On Tuesday we were on our own and we did 3 more vineyards and a distillery.  I think we were all about done with the wine tastings by this point and the tasting at the distillery was phenomenal!  We learned that we basically have been drinking our spirits incorrectly and learned how to do "boozy yoga" (just ask me about it the next time you see me).

On Wednesday we had arranged a bus tour of Muir Woods and Alcatraz Island and we were very glad that someone else was having to deal with parking and the traffic.  Let me back up a little here.  Unbeknownst to us, we scheduled our week's vacation during Pride Week.  So to add to the craziness of San Francisco tourist season, add almost 600,000 more visitors that were there simply to celebrate Pride Week.  They were estimating that there would be 1 million people in downtown SF on Saturday and Sunday to celebrate.  UGH!  Now don't get me wrong...I don't care to be around 1 million of ANYTHING...Baptists, Kindergartners, or Oklahomans (wink).  That's just tooooo many people in one area for me to want to deal with.  So back to my story.  

Muir Woods was really beautiful and it is so hard for me to believe that it is located just a few miles North of the Golden Gate Bridge.  If developers had their wish they would have chopped down these impressive trees years ago and built houses on them.  But fortunately this is a National Park site and that will never happen; at least not in my lifetime.  These trees are much taller than the sequoias that are found in Sequoia National Park but theirs are bigger around.  We are planning to see them once we are on the road full time!

Alcatraz was pretty interesting too.  I had always heard about this place and Mark and I had wanted to see it so I guess we can mark that one off of our bucket lists now.  

The remaining days we spent on a Hop On- Hop Off bus and toured the rest of San Francisco.  Amongst other things we did a walking tour of Chinatown, saw Height Asbury, crossed The Golden Gate Bridge a few times, saw Sausalito, Union Station, Fisherman's Wharf, and Lombard Street. We were going to ride a cable car but the lines were hours long and we didn't particularyly want to waste time waiting for 3 hours for a 20 minute ride. Next time!

All in all it was a GREAT week spent with our very best friends celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary!  Cheers Paul and Joyce!!