No Rain

The past two days have been packed with fun. Yesterday we actually visited the Space Needle and got to see the Seattle sites from 605 feet in the air. The Needle was built in 1962 for the World's Fair. There are 3 elevators and 3 floors. The second floor houses an over-priced rotating restaurant and the top floor is the observatory with indoor and outdoor areas. You can almost see Canada!

Next to the Space Needle is the EMO Museum containing pop culture history from music, TV, movies and more. They have an extensive exhibit dedicated to local alternative rock band, Nirvana. Pictures, instruments, hand written notes and lyrics, videos etc. all dedicated to the beginning to end of the band. We also enjoyed the Infinite Worlds exhibit that displays memorabilia from sci-fi movies and television shows. It was our nerdy paradise!

Guitar tornado inside the EMP

Hoverboards from Back to the Future

Dalek from Dr. Who

Last night we ended up at a restaurant specializing in clam chowder. Served in warm sourdough bread bowls they didn't skimp on the servings. We also tried their fried salmon bites. I'm not a huge fan of salmon, but having fresh, fried salmon did the trick and I'm in love. Afterwards we walked through the city back to our hotel.

First thing this morning we headed to the pier to get booked on a harbor tour. While we waited for the tour to begin we wandered over to check out Ye Olde Curiosity Shop. It's been a part of the pier for over 100 years. We met Sylvester, a mummy discovered in the Arizona desert. We also saw shrunken heads, a female mummy from South America, the preserved body of a two headed cow, and many other curious objects.

The harbor tour gave us more information about the piers and West Seattle. The West Seattle neighborhood was the landing place for the first white settlers, although they quickly realized that it's not well protected and, upon Chief Seattle's urging, moved the city to where it stands today. Seattle is a hub for crate shipping, so parts of the shore are lined with huge crates. The Port of Seattle bought cranes from China, for $10 million a piece, to help unload large barge cargo!

After the cruise we walked up to Pioneer Square and grabbed some lunch at an Irish pub.

Totem at Pioneer Square

 Right around the corner is Bob Spiedel's Underground Tour. We walked under Seattle for an hour to learn about some of the city's history. A huge fire burned 33 square blocks of the city in 1889, causing them to decide to level out the city and require buildings be built with brick or stone. I'm sure there is much more rich history to be had from the Emerald City, but the tiny bits we did hear were fascinating.

Toilet on the Underground Tour

The evening brought us to Columbia Center, containing the tallest observation deck in Seattle. 73 stories up you get a 360 degree view. The night lights of the city are beautiful!

Our night ended with Chinese food in the International District. I thought the food would blow me out of the water, but, honestly, it was just okay.

The people were very friendly which helped the overall atmosphere. I wish we had more time to spend in this area of the city, but it will have to wait for another time.

One more day and many more adventures to go!

My 90s Dream Come True - Seattle

This is our first time to Seattle, Washington in the upper northwest of the US. A few months ago we decided we needed a trip and this just fell in our lap.

Frontier Airlines had cheap tickets, of course they are a budget airline, but we thought it was worth it. We were delayed because of Seattle's weather, so we landed a little late. It had been almost 6 hours since we had eaten and getting to the hotel might take an hour so we decided to eat before grabbing our baggage, bad idea! Apparently, Frontier has very few flights out of Seattle so once their flights are done everyone disappears. Our baggage had been cleared away from the luggage carousel so we spent a good hour on the hunt through the airport and on the phone with the airline. By the luck of it, we walked by a lady pulling a bag out of a cage behind the carousel, come to find out our bag had been there the whole time! It was a lucky thing and we were finally on our way into town.

Monorail from below

Seattle's Link Light Rail goes right into the city, where we connected to the monorail to take us near our hotel at the Seattle Center. The monorail was built for the 1962 World's Fair to ferry people between downtown and the fairgrounds (that also contains the Space Needle). The monorail is 3 stories off the ground and starts at a mall. The monorail trains still look very '60s in design and the creaking doesn't give much confidence, but we made it safely to the drop off point. I guess 50 years of ferrying people back and forth can't be wrong!

It was a short walk to our hotel from there. Unfortunately, the Space Needle was closed for a private event so our plans to see Seattle at night are on hold, but the view from our hotel is amazing! The Seattle City Pass allows us to visit the observation tower on the Needle twice, once during the day and once at night, so we anticipate incredible views.

Space Needle from our hotel room

For dinner we decided to partake in Seattle's fresh seafood. Cutter's, near Pike's Place Market, served up fresh crab, salmon, and prawns to satisfy our craving. This was a short start to a highly anticipated trip. Thanks for reading :)

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!