June 2014 - Denver

Not really Denver, but Ft. Collins. With the truck on the fritz, Bruce & Bernie picked us up at the campground and off we went to the zoo in Ft. Collins. This was no ordinary zoo for this zoo had dinosaurs and other creatures one does not often come across. 

Swetsville Zoo  Fort Collins, Colorado with Bruce in the center

 We’ve been wanting to come to this place since we moved into our park in Texas and met Bill Swets one of the owners. Bill is the creator of this little whimsical zoo and has created some creatures that also live in our Texas park. We knew Bill was scheduled to be in Texas running our park there, so we were surprised when we found him here at the zoo and were delighted to get a personal tour. The unfortunate part of the story was that he had to come up early to deal with the spring flooding which was threatening his property.

Cache la Poudre River flooding the zoo

 Although a good 1/3 of the park was under the rising waters from the Cache la Poudre River receiving the snow melt from the front range of the Rockies, we were able to view a good portion of the park. This was once Bills farm and as he pointed out, they’re squeezin’ me out, with Walmart across the street to the northwest, and Costco on the western side of his property, soon he’ll give up the whole kit and caboodle.

swimming upstream

2 old dinosaurs

After bidding aduie to Bill, our day in Fort Collins was not done. We found the Benson Sculpture Gardens in a neighborhood of Ft. Collins. There were many Sculpture and these are just a few:

And yes, the crows are sculpted.

The day was delightful and we stopped for ice cream on the way out. The town was not to be out done by a couple of parks and presented this sculptor on the street next to the ice cream parlor.

 

Somehow I seemed to have missed getting a picture of Bernie in this blog, oh bother, maybe next time. Monday came around and we put the car into the shop, and sure enough they had it ready for us Tuesday Morning with new bearings in the front, a new U joint in the rear and lots of servicing to the drive train with a nice whopping $$$. I guess we can’t complain, with 140K driving and another 60K+ pulling the service was needed. The rest of our stay in Denver was more visiting with Bruce and Bernie, a quick howdy to one of my high school chums a round of golf and dinner with my cousin’s son Blair, which makes him my cousin once removed, eh? We met at a restaurant called steakhouse 10 in Denver, which if you go prepare to have some great food and service but also prepare to pay. Don’t worry Blair, you were worth it.

That was our 5 day stay in Denver, tomorrow we get ready to attack the mighty Rocky Mountains and pass through the Eishenhower Tunnel, ta ta.