The Great Western Prison and Post Office Tour of 2001

In July of 2001, Mom decided she wanted to take a vacation. She took out a map and figured out how far we could drive in 18 hours, and settled on Colorado. Here's what happened. In the words of Jimmy Buffett, it's a semi true story, beleive it or not. I made up a few things and a few I forgot. But the truth in the telling is all true to me.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Day One
July 7, 2001

Fredericksburg, Texas to Colorado Springs, Colorado

Four a.m.? What the...?

I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and smashed the alarm clock to tiny little pieces. I heard mom and dad puttering around, so I got up.

Our plan was to Leave Fredericksburg at 5 am and drive the 800 or so miles and spend the night.

The night before we took out one of the rear Captain's chairs in the van, and laid the back seat down so if anyone (mainly Dad) wanted to nap, they could lay down. We filled an ice chest with drinks and snacks. Part of the plan was that we would not stop for lunch, and keep driving!

I had packed up my bag the night before, so all I had to do was swallow a gallon of coffee before we took off. We did the usual, last minute, "Did you get the bags? Turn off the coffee maker? Get the camera? Forget your pants?" (Well, it was early.) We decided we had everything and hauled ass. Since it was my car, I got to drive! I drove across town on Austin Street. By the brand new post office, (and the foundation for the new Holiday Inn Express that was due to open soon) I turned onto US 87 and headed north.

About 15 miles out, I noticed something odd on the dashboard. The "Battery" light was on. The further I drove, the dimmer the dash lights got. We drove through Brady as the sun came up. In Eden, and we passed the first of the prisons refrenced in the title, I turned off the headlights.

In San Angelo, we pulled through a Wal-Mart, hoping to find they were open, but it was only 7:30 am. We pushed on. Our philosophy, was "Don't Stop. Keep Moving."

Between San Angelo and Big Spring is a tiny little town called Carlsbad. Off on the left side of the road, was a shiny, new, red brick post office. The second new post office on our trip!

We hit Big Spring at about 9 am, and found a NAPA store. They found us a mechanic who could replace my alternator. We spent the next couple of hours cooling our heels in their garage. I tried to call Gary to kill some time, but I could only leave a couple of messages. Finally, about 11 am, we were off! Again!

At Big Spring, Dad started driving, and I rode shotgun. We passed through Lamesa and were heading for Muleshoe when I noticed a lot of thick cedar stands on the north side of houses. These must be the only thing that stops a north wind from chilling them too much. God knows there's not much between Lamesa and Canada to stop the wind.

When we got to Clovis, New Mexico, we stopped at a visitors center. The woman behind the counter gave us a short cut to get us up to Raton, and I-25. We got in the van, Mom behind the wheel, and took off once more. I looked at my cell phone, and noticed, aloud, that Sprint had adjusted the clock Mom asked, "How did they know what time it was iin New Mexico?" "Um, sattelite and GPS." "Oh." Shortly outside of Clovis, my cell phone lost it's signal so I turned it off.

Mom drove across the eastern plains of New Mexico. We all found the plains uninteresting. Pretty much flat, we decided we preferred the Texas Hill Country. Then we crossed the caprock!

The road writhed beneath the van like a coiling snake. We climbed uphill and roared downhill. We passed a sign that advertised a play dramatizing the life of Billy the Kid in a natural ampitheater. All too soon, the granduer of the New Mexico caprock dissolved once more into the plains. And we drove. And we drove. And we drove.

In New Mexico, the speed limit on these state roads was 55 miles per hour. I think we saw six or seven members of the New Mexico law enforcement community as we zigged and zagged across the landscape. Shortly after leaving the caprock, a BMW bearing Texas plates flew by us. Fifteen minutes later, we found them sitting on the side of the road as the Texan explained why he was driving so fast to a member of the local constabulary.

And we drove across the plains.

The plains.

The plains.

(Thank you, Tattoo. Welcome, everyone, to Fantasy Island!)

We passed through dozens of little towns. Each with a resplendant new Post Office at the edge of town.

One little town, stretching about a half mile along the road, had a 20 mph speed limit! Bad enough that you can only drive 55 in New Mexico, but to crawl through this dusty, hole in the wall was torture. And sure enough, in the middle of town, sitting comfortably in his air conditioned car, was a member of the New Mexico law enforcement community.

At Raton, we finally picked up I-25, and headed north towards Colorado. We crawled up into the mountains and crossed over, and wound up in Trinidad, Colorado. About 3 pm, we stopped at a tourist center. After a potty break, we got back into the van and I got behind the steering wheel. As I pulled out of the parking lot, I looked around, and thought that I should come back and spend a few days here. Before I could complete the thought, we were back on the interstate, and heading north.

We hit Pueblo about 5 pm. On the outskirts of town, a green highway sign announced we were passing a women's prison. It was beautiful: they way the sun glistened off of the razor-sharp barbed wire made the prison look like a diamond in a jewelry store. Prison number two!

Halfway through the city, I remembered my cell phone, and switched it on. There was a message from Gary who wondered if we were still in Big Spring. I called him and told him we were already in Colorado, but thanks anyway. A few minutes later, the phone rang. Rodney wanted to know what he should tell Grandmother. Apparently, she had been trying to call our house, and no one would answer. He knew where we were going, but wasn't sure how much he should reveal. I handed the phone to mom.

When we got to our hotel in Colorado Springs, at about 8 pm, I tried to call Grandmother. No answer. So we headed off to supper. (We're from Texas. Dinner is lunch and supper is dinner.) Halfway through the meal my phone rang. Grandmother's caller ID picked out my name and number so she returned my call. I passed the phone to mom, and ate while she explained our vacation plans, and why she wasn't included.

Yes. I know. I will burn in hell.

Day Two
July 8, 2001
Colorado Springs

We started our exploration of Colorado Springs at Garden of the Gods. The gift shop opened at 8 am, and we dutifully perused their wares, and used their deck overlooking the garden to take a few photos. Notice the big grey mountain behind the bright red rocks? Notice the cloud wrapped around the top of the mountain? Stay tuned.

We drove into the Garden of the Gods, stopping occasionally to take photos. I have to hand it to whoever laid out the roads there, everytime you turn a corner you have another breathtaking vista opens up before you. And they even put a parking area there so you can take pictures.

We left the Garden of the Gods and headed out for Pike's Peak. Double Time! March!

On a trip to Colorado the year before (It was a work trip to Vail. My life is hard.), I was amazed at all the healthy, outdoorsy things folks in Colorado are into. Every car has a ski rack on top and a bike rack on the back. I have a feeling that the state requires everyone to have a kayak, but I could be mistaken. These lean, athletic, healthy types are absolute maniacs on the highway. The posted speed limit was 60 mph, but I don't think I ever got below 75 the entire way to Pike's Peak. And people blew past me honking their horns like I was deliberatly holding up traffic!

Da noive! (Read it like Bugs Bunny talks. Okay, I'll translate. The nerve.)

Anyway, we started up Pike's Peak. At the entrance gate, a sign said it was 40 degrees at the top. About halfway up, we stopped at a little gift shop (imagine my surprise) for drinks. I mentioned my previous visit to Colorado. Then, as we left Colorado Springs and headed for Vail, we crossed the Great Divide, and I felt nauseous and woozy. So I expected to be the same going up Pike's Peak. You know, altitude sickness. But so worries.

We got back in the car and Dad drove up to the top of Pike's Peak.

In 1893, Katharine Lee Bates (not related to Norman), went up to the top of Pike's Peak and was inspired by the sight before her to write a poem called "America the Beautiful." I wish I could report about the purple mountains majesty, but remember that cloud I mentioned earlier? The summit of Pike's Peak was shrouded in that cloud. All we could see was a dense, gray fog. I did see a marmot, though.

At the top of Pike's Peak is a gift shop (imagine my surprise) and a snack bar. After the obligatory tourist photos we went inside. I am proud to say that I ate a hamburger at 14,000 feet above sea level. While I was eating, I glanced out a window and saw a backpacker finally reach her goal. I stopped for a moment to absorb the impact of what I saw. People actually walk up this thing!

As I chewed, an announcement came over the PA system. One of the backpackers needed a ride down the mountain. Anyone interested should contact the sales counter. I wondered why anyone who had hiked to the top of Pike's Peak, especially these athletic Colorado residents, would spend a couple of days climbing to the top of Pike's Peak, and then want to waste the experience by getting a ride back down. I shook my head, and noticed a guy a little shorter than me who looked like he had just come off the mountain. I did a double take.

For the last few years, I have been watching the Eco-Challenge. It is an adventure race that used to broadcast on the Discovery Channel, then moved to the USA Network. When I was in the hospital, I made a serious effort to watch the Eco-Challege. I saw most of it. Darn morphine!

The guy across the room from me was one of the winners of the 2000 Eco-Challenge, Ian Anderson. He wound up winning the 2001 Eco-Challenge in New Zealand later in the year. (It was broadcast in the early part of 2002.) What a shrimp. He was no match for my magnificent girth.

Anyway, we got back into the van and started back down. Time's a wastin'! Got a few more sights to see! Already spent too long on top of this hill! So off we went, with Dad behind the wheel. We did spend a few minutes on the way down to snap some shots of the views we couldn't get fom the summit. I made a really bad panoramic photo from one scenic overlook.

Halfway down, we stopped at the first gift shop, and Dad had me drive the rest of the way down. He didn't feel comfortable driving in Colorado Springs.

Mom wanted to stop at some mansion in Manitou Springs, but we couldn't turn into the entrance. Some guy was hogging all the space. With so much traffic, I was getting a bit pissed off. So we wrote off the mansion.

Instead, we went to some Indian ruins. It was kind of interesting. But a lot of it was so well restored that it looked like it was built last year. It wasn't until we got home that I found a panoramic picture of the ruins in 1908.

Then it was Double Time Ho! to Seven Falls. Hup! Hup! (Our famly vacations tend to be crammed full of sight seeing. It's like we can never come this way again so we have to see everything now.)

Seven Falls was cool. But we had to park so far away, that Dad couldn't walk all the way. So we would stop every so often to let him rest. Hidden speakers played Native American flute music all the way up to the gift shop. (Imagine my surprise.) We browsed through the stuff, and then went up an elevator to a viewing platform to see the falls. A nice shot, but there was no way I was climbing all those steps just to see some water!

Mercifully, this was our last stop, so we headed back to the motel for a bit before having dinner.

Day Three
July 9, 2001
Cripple Creek

Next morning, we found a little pancake place for breakfast, then we went to see the US Air Force Academy. Dad wasn't up to walking so we didn't go down the the chapel. Then we drove across town and over to Cripple Creek. Let me rephrase that. Then I drove across town and out to Cripple Creek. Dad and Mom told me that they didn't feel comfortable driving on the roads because of the maniacs.

We got out of town without too much swearing. I kept looking for a place to pull over so someone else could drive and I could look, but by the time we got on the road to Cripple Creek there was no place to do that.

I expected Cripple Creek to be all neon and glitter, since it is a gambling town, but I was pleasantly surprised. Every other building was empty, and the remaining buildings were mostly casinos. I found a parking place near the hotel and we wandered around until check-in. We rode the narrow gauge railroad, and while we browsed the gift shop (imagine my surprise) I noticed the Cripple Creek Holiday Inn Express sitting atop a mountain overlooking the city like King Ludwig of Bavaria's Neuschwanstein castle.

We board the train and the engineer pulled out of the station, explaining that this was an actual gold mining train that had been moved from another town. He told us the history of the town as we pulled onto a siding to wait for the other train to come back from its tour.

When gold was discovered in Cripple Creek, the town exploded and became one of the largest cities in Colorado. In fact, I could still see the grid of streets that ran to the south of town. The houses had, by and large, all disappeared, but the streets weathered under the deep blue sky like the bones of some rectangular animal.

Once the other train had passed, we went out to Anaconda. Anaconda was another mining town over a mountain from Cripple Creek. When the mine there played out in 1910, the town dried up. The engineer pointed out some old mine shafts, and then took us back to Cripple Creek, as a rain cloud moved in.

We wandered the streets a little, found a casino where we had luch and lost a few bucks, then wandered until 4 pm. In my journal, I wrote that Cripple Creek reminded me of Santa Anna, with more mountains. Everywhere I looked, vestiges of the Wild West stared back at me. I was impressed. So imagine spending two hours wandering the empty storefronts of Santa Anna, Texas.

Anyway, we checked in at 4 pm, and met a guy at the front desk from Abilene. We got the luggage up to the room, and I had a beer. (Did you think I would let the ice chest stay outside?)

We had dinner, and then we gambled. I turned $10 into $40 then into nothing in about an hour. But at least the beers were free.

Day Four
July 10, 2001

Florissant, Buena Vista, Salida, Royal Gorge, and Pueblo

One of the saddest sights I have ever seen is two floors full of abandoned slot machines that blink, and clink, and glow forlornly behind plastic sheeting. Apparently, the State of Colorado thinks people are either too stupid are too sleepy to gamble before breakfast. The casino even had to put those velvet ropes up to keep the two legged cattle from wandered among the rows. As we walked down towards the restaurant (naturally, deep in the back of the hotel behind thousands of slot machines) the sheeting stretched over the slots and the little velvet ropes made me think about cows and slaughter houses. ("How to serve Man" is a cookbook! Aieee!)

By the time we checked out, though, the obtacles to greed had been removed. As we headed down to the lobby, we shared the elevator with a man in his 80s, pushing his oxygen tank on a little cart. He got off at the main level and wandered off to lose a few dozen quarters.

Dad drove as we headed out of Cripple Creek on the day-long drive that looped us past Buena Vista and Royal Gorge and then on to Pueblo, where we would spend the the night before heading home. And on the outskirts of town, sat a glistening red brick post office, with white trim, and silver letters. No wonder postage is so high! They spent billions building post offices in every small town.

We stopped at the Florissant Fossil Beds National Park. Back before dinosaurs ruled the earth, giant sequoia trees stood on this spot. Rising hundreds of feet into the air, the trunks were dozens of feet in circumference. Then the weather changed, obviously in anticipation of the coming global warming caused by humans billions of years later, and Florissant was a giant inland sea. The trees fell, and the stumps were covered with mud and silt. Over the millenia, the stumps fossilized. Then the weather changed again. Mother Nature decided to have one last cool snap before the Rise of man, I guess. The lake drained as the Mountains formed, and Florissant became an undulating plain.

The Park is misnamed. There weren't that many fossils. They had pictures of the fossils on the walls of the park office, but I didn't kick a million year old fossil up to the acclaim of science. Darnit! but the fossil stumps are cool.

The largest petrified stump is 12 feet tall, 38 feet around. The tree was estimated to have been 300 feet tall, and 1000 years old when an ancient mudflow covered it. Locals used to bring their saws up here to cut peices off of it. There are still broken saw blades buried in the stump.

We took part of the nature trail, before Dad had to stop. He just can't do long walks anymore. Hump! Ho! and back into the van. We drove for a few hours, eating from the ice chest. About noon we came to Buena Vista, Colorado. We stopped to take a picture.

Then Mom drove. And drove. And drove. We went from the Mountains of Cripple Creek, to the plains of Florissant, and then back into the mountains along the Colorado River. We saw morons in boats running the rapids, and geniuses who had opened whitewater services to take the morons' money.

Finally, about 1 pm, we got to Royal Gorge. We came in from the south, on a tiny ribbon of asphalt that wove through shrubby cedar trees, and cactii. I swear it looked like the Willow City loop. Then finally, we saw the bridge.

I don't know why they built a bridge there. I guess they wanted to fleece some tourists, because I couldn't see a big truck crossing that bridge. In fact, I had a hard time seeing how our van was going to cross this thing.

We went into a gift shop, paid through the nose for a burger and a coke, and spent a couple of hours admiring the scenery. Mom and I walked across the bridge, while Dad rode the trolley.

We rode the vertical train to the bottom of the gorge, where we stood and looked up at the spaghetti thin bridge across the gorge. Then we watched as more rafts ran the rapids. Finally, we were ready to get back up to the top. The guys running the rides had a world weary expression as the told us to stand on the outside of the steps with the yellow lines, which was every other step. Folks getting off the train were to exit on the unpainted steps and go down the inside. naturally, the great unwashed masses, excluding me, who has dealt with tourists, ignored these guys. They had to go down the steps and teach people what the color yellow looked like and where the outside edge was. As soon as they left, the tourists, who know more that the guy running the rides, went back to their former places. Naturally, as soon as someone stepped out of the car, these tourists were jostling each other to be the very first one into the car, so they could wait 10 minutes in their cage while the last person got in. As the operators rolled their eyes, they secured the doors on the train. I could see in their eyes a deep and abiding hatred of people. Something everyone who works with tourists on a daily basis develops. Mentally, I sent them a beer. I didn't want to talk to them and piss them off.

Then we took the tram back across. Storm clouds blew in, and it started to drizzle. Then we got back into the van and drove into Pueblo, past a Men's prison on the edge of town.