Rocky Mountain High...

Last weekend I was visiting Megan in beautiful Grand Lake, Colorado. She's out there serving as the Technical Director for the Rocky Mountain Repertory Theater. In addition to seeing two of the three shows at RMRT (Guys and Dolls and Chess) we spent some time in Rocky Mountain National Park. For those unfamiliar with Colorado geography Grand Lake is the western entrance to the park. (I guess it would also be the western exit of the park.) When we went the full run of road between Grand Lake and Estes Park were treated to the sight of Elk and several junctures. On the way back over the mountain we stopped at a short trail called Rock Cut (elevation something close to 12,000 feet above sea level.) This is in the alpine tundra portion of the park, the portion above the tree line. I mention this because as we were walking the trail last Sunday there were ominous clouds and rumbles of thunder. If you're bigger than a yellow-bellied marmot there isn't much cover if it starts to pour. Speaking of marmots, prior to walk up that trail the only wildlife we had seen were the aforementioned elk. When I made the comment, on seeing a sign about big horn sheep, "I was promised big horn sheep and I haven't seen any." Megan replied, "No, you were promised elk. Moose and sheep were a possibility but they were not promised." Which was true. On the way back down the trail to car at Rock Cut we saw someone focusing his camera on what appeared to be an empty rock. Then we noticed in the dim light of the cloudy mountain top that there was a pika on the rock. After a about a minute (maybe less) the critter scurried away tired of waiting for its picture to be taken. A little further down we saw a pair of marmots chasing around. We ended with my first encounter on the west side of the park with what is I guess a common phenomenon, the elk jam. This was preceded by something I am familiar with from northern Minnesota, the moose jam. If you are unfamiliar with these terms they relate to cars, drivers and stopping when the large wildlife are in view.

That was Sunday, my flight for home was Monday evening so we decided to head to Denver early and find someplace to visit on the way. The place we found was The Colorado Railroad Museum. The museum is in Golden, Colorado more famous as the home of Coors Brewing Co. We've been to a lot of museums over the years and this ranks up there as one of the best. The museum features Colorado's history with narrow gauge railways and standard gauge railways as well. On the grounds of the museum are two excellent model railroad exhibits. The outdoor display by the Denver Garden Railroad Society was active with several generations of operators. Inside the Denver HO model railroad club maintains a large display that reminded me of the one here in St Paul at Bandanna Square. The highlight of the museum is all of the various rolling stock that they have, engines, freight cars, passenger cars, etc. There was a Coors labeled box car and a Coors painted switcher engine. The museum is rightly proud of the working roundhouse they have built for restoration projects. Of all the things we saw there the most interesting were the three Galloping Geese. (or maybe it should be Galloping Gooses. The link takes you to Wikipedia's entry on these interesting machines.) A Galloping Goose was a basically a car retooled to run on narrow gauge rails. This allowed the Rio Grande Southern railway to run small freight or passenger loads up the mountain at a lower cost. The idea of taking what amounted to a passenger car and running on rails was interesting. I like rail travel and would have preferred to take the train (The California Zephyr) to Colorado but our current passenger rail system would have required either a late night bus ride to Chicago and 7-8 hour wait at the station, or an overnight stay in Chicago between the Empire Builder and the Zephyr. (More on the unfortunate weaknesses in our rail system some other time.) So I picked up a Trains magazine to read on the plane coming home. If you find yourself in the Denver area this is well worth the price of admission.

Speaking of "modern" air travel in Post 9/11 America. I'm glad I don't do it much anymore. I have been scanned twice now. The first time I had my ID and boarding pass in my shirt pocket which the agent noticed before the scan. In Denver I forgot to take my wallet out of my back pocket which required some other finger wipe scan. I survived. I flew on Frontier Airlines who has "mascots" on the tail and wing tips of the plane. On the way out I got to fly with Fritz the Mountain Goat and on the way back with the polar bear cubs Klondike and Snow.