A Journey to Rapid City (South Dakota)

My niece and I set out on a road trip to Rapid City, South Dakota to attend the wedding of my brother-in-law. My husband left a few days early to help prepare and set-up. We left Denver around mid-morning on a Thursday and had to stop and take pictures of ourselves at the Wyoming border, the first state north of Colorado.

View of Wyoming... somewhere...

About 92 miles into Wyoming we veered off onto highway 26. I did not realize it until we were traveling along it that the highway follows a similar path to the Oregan Trail. There is one section where wagon wheels were cemented in rock and can still be seen today.

From that point on two lane roads wound through hilly areas and eventually led through the Black Hills into South Dakota. Only 7 short hours after starting we arrived in Rapid City to settle into our hotel, the Alex Johnson. The hotel opened in 1928, right after construction began on Mt. Rushmore, and is now famous for ghost sightings. It was updated nicely but still held a bit of old charm. Some of the decor is reminiscent of native american design. Although we did not have any supernatural encounters, our stay was comfortable.

Chandelier hanging above the lobby at the Alex Johnson - native american art 

Decor and balcony above the lobby

We spent our first evening milling around the downtown area near the hotel and enjoying the Summer Nights live bands. We then headed over to swim with my brother-in-law's family at their hotel (not the one getting married!).

Even though the wedding was on Friday it was scheduled for 6 pm so we had time to do some sight-seeing in the morning. As we walked back from breakfast we noticed that on each corner in Rapid City, there is a different bronze statue of various presidents of the United States. My sister-in-law, a recently former resident of the city explained that it's good luck to high-five President Jimmy Carter. Although I did not photograph anyone actually doing that, I did get my nephews messing around like boys do!!

All the nieces and nephews wanted to see Reptile Gardens, an award winning amusement park filled with birds, reptiles, and insects. It was a beautiful day to be outside and pet some alligators! We saw a bird show and a snake show. There was a prairie dog habitat and a dome filled with tropical plants and animals. The kids and adults had a blast and I would highly recommend it for those traveling that way.

Petting a baby alligator

Bald eagle at Reptile Gardens

Afterwards, there was a short amount of time to visit Mt. Rushmore. It was Friday morning and I was worried about the traffic and number of people that would be visiting the site, but we were lucky enough to get right in and find a parking space. It was a quick "Chevy Chase" type of visit ("uh huh uh huh, let's go!") but totally worth the $11 parking fee.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln

Along the walkway to view Mt. Rushmore is flag row, below my state's flag this was inscribed.

Back at the hotel we showered, dressed, and headed over to the Journey Museum for the wedding! It was a beautiful venue and interesting museum to see. Congrats to my brother-in-law, Ben, and my new sister-in-law, Johnelle!!!

Ranch Turned School

View towards La Junta from the back of the ranch

Recently the school I work for bought a former ranch that housed troubled youth and provided them with rehabilitation in various forms. The ranch opened in 1959 and provided training in careers such as mechanics, printing, basic veterinary services, general ranching, and many others. In 2012 the ranch lost its funding and had to be shut down. GOAL Academy, my school, bought the ranch with TABOR funds. These funds were set aside as required by law to help with maintenance of school buildings, but since we are an online school there was no where to spend the money. By accident the sale of the ranch came to the attention of the CEO of GOAL. After much discussion and negotiating the ranch became school property.

I had the privilege of attending a recent conference at the new site. We were given a tour and short history of the ranch by the manager. The brain child of several Colorado judges, seeing a need to help the growing population of troubled teens, for 52 years the ranch provided rehab and training for thousands of young men. It is located near La Junta, Colorado (which mean The Junction), which lies along the Santa Fe trail; cows would be herded over the land toward Pueblo, Colorado or New Mexico to be shipped east. There are approximately 37 buildings on the small 30 acre corner of the 317 acre land mass.

Sign near the small animal pens

A view of my room

Many of the buildings are fitted as classrooms, others are set up specifically to meet the needs to the training occurring in that building. There is a gym with an attached weight and game room. Greenhouses, horse stables, animals pens, dorms, and many others.

Print shop, maintenance, etc.

The library was built by former attendees of the ranch. The students would study plumbing, wiring, structure support (basic architecture) and other aspects for building. Then work together to make a plan for the library. Eventually, they worked together to actually build it. Master plumbers, electricians, etc. were brought in to ensure the integrity of the work. The building is now a standing tribute to the work these students were willing to put in to achieve a common goal.

The library and meeting rooms

The chapel on the grounds was donated by the town of Arlington, Colorado. Built in 1916 it represents the common architecture for that era. In May 1967, it was moved 27 miles to rest at the southwest corner of the ranch.

Arlington Chapel

GOAL will use the ranch to supply Career & Technical Education (CTE) to our students. It will allow us to provide the "high touch" part of our online program. As the ranch is brought back up to meet fire codes and safety codes it will be available for outside entities to rent the space.

Sculpture near horse stables

Pre-Christmas NYC

Our original flight plan from Shymkent was taking us to 2 days in New York City. Due to the delays and mix-ups we ended up having only 24 hours to check it out. We landed in NYC on the 23rd of December at around 5 pm. We pre-bought tickets to the Empire State Building (with the VIP line jump) and the GreyLine double decker bus tour. Amazingly, we were able to cram in both activities plus a little more!

Pizza from Famous Ray's on 7th Ave.

We stayed at the Holiday Inn on Fifth Avenue. It was close to most everything we wanted to see, even though the rooms were a bit small. Here's the view from the 10th story:

Pizza and deli sandwiches were on the menu as NYC is famous for both. Finding a pizza place open past 9 pm on some of the side streets around us was difficult, but we managed to wander into one just off Times Square, which happened to be only 3 blocks away.

Rockefeller Center was only a 6 block walk as well, so after dinner we headed that way. Beware! The lights turn off around 11:30 pm and there was a lot of groaning and booing from the crowd. Luckily, we made it there around 11 pm and had plenty of time to take pictures:

Several of the department stores have over-the-top winter displays during the holiday season. We were only able to make it to Saks Fifth Avenue, but the display was awesome! Each window was filled with animatronics of yeti and people, and told a story about a talented snowflake-making yeti that made his way to the Big Apple to create snow for Saks. Although we didn't capture every window, here are a few glimpses of those we did:

The hotel provided breakfast in the morning, which was perfect for our early morning jaunt to the Empire State Building. We were told that it gets busy quick, and we had to leave the hotel at 2 pm in order to make our flight. The viewing balconies open at 8 am and we arrived around 8:15. The lines were minimal - thank goodness - and we were able to make it up to both viewing balconies and out in around an hour.

Lower Manhattan

In the middle-top of this picture is a glimpse of the rounded building of Madison Square Garden.

Chrysler Building

On the left, if you follow the H&M building down, just to the left of it you can see a bright light - that's Times Square. In the upper-right of this photo is Central Park.

We really wanted to take the subway up to the check-in site for GreyLine bus tours, but to save time we hopped in a taxi. We were able to hop on the 10:15 bus loop that would take us by the 9/11 tower site, Statue of Liberty, SoHo, and many other locations on our list to visit. We knew that we didn't have enough time to get off the bus to visit each location, but at least we could take pictures and say, "we've been there."

We left Shymkent, Kazakhstan on December 20th, and finally on the 24th of December we would be landing in Denver, Colorado, home. The trip was full of ups and downs, but we were really glad to be home finally!

Walking Warsaw

All in all, we only had 20 hours to check out Warsaw. We landed in the evening and checked into the Radisson Blu Centrum Hotel, I was lucky enough to have some Orbucks saved up so the room only cost $35.

View from the hotel room

We walked up the street a few blocks to a busy area with a lot of shopping. At the corner was a little bar/cafe that looked interesting so we popped in for some food. We ordered beers, polish sausages, french fries, and some sort of dumplings.

Afterwards, we walked up the street to check out the shops. The McDonald's was huge and featured foods unbeknownst to us - we didn't try them but we took a picture!

Adjacent to the McDonald's was a grocery/department store, so we wandered through it. Back outside on the sidewalk there were a lot of people chatting and wandering around. We went further up the street to see the types of shops, which included Swatch and other upscale shops I would never step foot in on a normal basis. It was late in the evening and most of the stores were closing up, we were also pretty exhausted, so we decided to head back to the hotel.

The morning was raining, but that didn't stop us! For breakfast we walked half a block to the 99 restaurant. We both ordered the Polish Breakfast that consisted of bread, various cheeses, eggs, and deli meats. It was very European, but it was a refreshing break from the food in Kazakhstan.

Our waiter was kind enough to help us find the best way to get the old town of Warsaw. Since we didn't have a lot of time to research things to do, we had to jump on the quickest and cheapest thing possible. On the 3 block walk to public transport we saw a beautiful flower market:

We took the light rail about a mile up the road (it was the quickest way since we were so short on time) to the old town of Warsaw which had buildings dating back to the 13th century.

After WWII there was a lot of destruction to the old town, but it was meticulously rebuilt using as much of the original bricks as possible. The place was beautifully decorated for Christmas, which made this quick trip even more exciting!

Our first glimpse of old town after departing the light rail

Stairs to the bridge to cross the road

Going across the bridge

Looking down on the street from the bridge. The bottom right is where the first picture was taken.

The square of the old town is surrounded by shops and cafes. It looked as if they were getting ready to set up for some sort of celebration, and the center of the square contained a temporary ice rink.

On the walk to the old town square

In the old town square

We wanted to stay longer to take in the sights and explore more of the old town, but time was running short so we headed back to the hotel on the light rail. This is definitely a place we would like to revisit when we have more time!