Traveling, again

Taking  short break from the blog as we have brought my husband to Las Vegas to celebrate his birthday and are too busy to sneak in any compute time.  Check out our "where we have been" map to see what we have been up to.  We have been to our 22nd state as of today when we parked in Arizona and walked across the Hoover Dam.

Disneyworld - November 7-10

We left Denver and headed straight to Disney World.  We had stocked up on provisions while in Denver so we had some food in our suitcases but knowing that my husband would be joining us, I also allowed for some eating out.  He is not as frugal as we are and, as long as he is willing to pay, we are willing to buy food.

We arrived at the airport and caught the Magical Express to our hotel.  We decided to stay at our favorite of the value resorts, Pop Century.  It is a few dollars more than the All Star Resorts but we like it a little more. 

I am not going to go into detail about his trip since we have so many Disney trips to refer back to and I have a couple of other trip reports to get caught up on.  I will say that we did get there in time to catch the last day or so of the Wine and Food Festival and I did get another crack at my lamb chops from the Australia Pavilion. 

Everyone managed to get their fill of rides and pool time and the kids loved having their father there with us.

What was super cool was the fact that another family from back home was there.  Big Boy told me before we left that his classmate had said that they would be in Disney for the week.  So, as soon as we hit Florida, we called the mother and left her a voicemail.  She responded by leaving us a voicemail that they would have to call us when we got back since they were in WDW.  After a few rounds of telephone tag, we had a great laugh when we sprung it on them that we were there too.  The boy is in Big Boy';s class and Cub Scout den.  They also have a little girl, a few years younger than Lil' Bit but who Lil' Bit considers one of her closest friends.  They were ether with extended family but after already having spend half the week with them, my friends were more than ready to ditch their family and hang out with us.

I have almost no pictures of Big Boy from this trip because he was either with his father or with his friend the entire time.  I love the other parents so it was a pleasure hanging out with them for a few days.


Big Boy and his friend

Lil' Bit and her friend

I have no budget report for this trip since my husband paid for almost everything and I have no receipts.  But sometimes, it is great to just cut loose and not worry about the money.

Denver, Colorado - getting home and budget report

Well, we didn't go home from Colorado, we went straight to Disney but we did get on our first choice flight with no problem.

As for the budget report..... well, here is the problem with technology.  I use an app to keep track of all me expenses and prior to downloading the spreadsheet to a PC, I had a phone issue and had to do a factory reset.  I lost my expense report.

I do have the receipts and could re-create the report but since this report is already more than three months behind, I figure I will just have to sum it up.

We used price line for the hotel and paid a ridiculously low price.  I think it was something like $55 per night.

The car was also cheap.

We ate food that we brought and only bought a few very cheap souvenirs.  We did pay entrance fees at a couple of places.  Although I can't cite the exact dollar amount, I do recall that we stayed within budget.

Denver and Colorado Springs, Colorado

We didn't spend much time IN Colorado Springs because by this time, the kids pretty much just wanted to find somewhere to climb rocks like we did in the Garden of the Gods.  We stopped by a Walmart for provisions on our way back to Denver and then pulled into a sport for a quick hike.  I truly couldn't tell you where it was but it was a nice little hike down to a series of waterfalls .  The kids did not appreciate the beauty of it and thought the climbing opportunities were too tame.  But I liked it.

At the kids insistence, we stopped back bu the Garden of the Gods for another round of rock climbing.

We headed back to the hotel, tired, but not too tired for dinner and quick swim.

Remember the part about the trip to Disney being a secret?  I discovered along the way that earl on, Big Boy had spilled the beans to Lil' Bit and she knew about the Disney trip.  I have to say that she did an excellent job of keeping the secret from me that she knew about the trip.  I thought I was surprising her and she played right along until the end.

Colorado Springs, Colorado - The North Pole

We had pricked up numerous brochures about the area and there was mention of the Colorado Springs North Pole but not much information about what it really was.  What we found was a tourist trap / amusement park.  There was an enormous gift shop and behind that was an amusement park.  The rides seemed to be geared toward much smaller children and I knew that the money would be wasted if we decided to go in.  We settled for the gift shop where the kids bought themselves slingshots and I picked up a Christmas ornament.

 

The one good thing about this stops was that it was only a few minutes out of our way.

Denver Colorado - Cliff dwelling

As I mentioned before (but no pictures), we paid to see some cliff dwellings.  Or, rather, we paid to see a replica of cliff dwellings. 

I had the memories of my long ago trip to the Gila Cliff Dwellings in New Mexico.  These were authentic dwellings up on the side of a mountain, only accessible by foot.  They were amazing and authentic and mostly untouched.

What we found in Denver was a seemingly plastic, imitation.

There was nothing to see and I couldn't even coax the kids out of the car.  I left, angry at the money wasted.

Denver Colorado - Ghost Town Museum

I mentioned the Ghost Town Museum but at the time, had not yet uploaded the pictures.  Here they are.

 

 

As you can see, there wasn't much there.  You could only go into one of the "buildings"... the saloon.  The insides of the buildings were set up to replicate whatever type of business or home it was supposed to depict but each vignette was cluttered and the labels, while useful, detracted from the experience.  Big waste of time and money.

Heading out again

I went to the library the other day to upload my pictures but forgot to bring one of my disks.  Now, we are headed out again and I am not sure if I will have internet or not.  We are going to New Orleans for the weekend so don't expect much from me for the next few days.

We must interrupt this trip report with an announcement

Even though we went to Colorado months ago, apparently, I didn't finish downloading the pictures.  Since we are in an Internet black hole out here in the countryside, I have to wait until Monday to visit the local library and use the Internet there.

In the mean time, I will ramble on about the thought process behind our next trip.

If you look at our travel map, you will see that there is a tiny little hole right in the middle of a whole lot of orange.  We have not yet made it to West Virginia.  I have but the kids have not.  The reason for this is our airline does not fly to West Virginia.  It makes sense to drive there since we can make it to the closest corned in about 4 hours driving.  A couple of the places we would like to see are about 7 hours from our house.  We were considering going this weekend but my husband is....well.... how do I put this.... my husband is a big old scardey cat.  He doesn't want the kids and I traveling so far in our beat up old van.  He also cited the expense of driving so far (for what he considers a silly reason, I am sure)  So, West Virgina will have to wait for now.  I think we would enjoy it more in the spring or summer anyway when everything is all greened up.

The kids have a three day weekend and I am always off on Mondays  I spent the day looking at flights to see where we might go this weekend.  After crossing off all the cities where the flights were full or almost full.  And then crossing off the ones where the flights would be too long for a three day weeks.  I then proceeded to eliminate anywhere where it would be cold.  I ran the cities through the weather channel website and saved the ones where the temperatures would be mild.

The four finalists are:

Little Rock, AK
Phoenix, AZ
New Orleans, LA
Oklahoma City, OK

My next step is going to be investigating what there is to do in each of these cities and which one(s) are most affordable.  In the past week or so, I lost three days pay due to illness, a snow day, and a sick child.  Since I get paid only when I work, I am expecting only half my usual paycheck.  Budget will be very critical this trip.

I am determined to go somewhere this weekend though.  Not only do I not want to miss taking advantage of the three day weekend but also, Big Boy is starting an acting workshop soon which will keep us tied up for the next five weekends.

Well, back to my Internet research.  I will blog again when I either have pictures uploaded or have figured out where we will be going.

Also, say tuned for trips reports for another Disney trip and trips to Kentucky and Indiana.

Denver and Colorado Springs, Colorado

After leaving the zoo, we visited  downtown Denver to take in some of the local architecture.

We hopped in the car bright and early to set out on unknown adventures.  I had come up with a list of sights to see between Denver and Colorado Springs.  We started out at a place called "the Ghost Town Museum"

This was very clearly a tourist trap and I tried to steer the kids away from it but Big Boy begged to go inside.  There was a gift shop full of western nick knacks, mostly made in China.   For the price of admission you could visit the "ghost town".  It was basically a very large building with faux buildings mimicking a western town.  The "buildings" were roped off so that you had to look at everything from doorways and windows.  There were tons of artifacts, probably mostly real, and they were labeled with little informational tags.  It was clearly a museum experience rather than the ghost town experience I was expecting.  The kids seemed to enjoy it enough but I would put it on my "skip this attraction" list.

We also stopped off at a "Cliff Dweller Village" but this turned out to be an even bigger disappointment than the ghost town.  I can't find my pictures so you will have to rely on my description but you are not missing much.  I could not get a feel for whether these were authentic cliff dwellings, carefully restored and then made handicapped accessible or if they were entirely manufactured.  But, for thousand year old cliff dwellings they were ground level and appeared newer than my fifteen year old house.  We spent about two minutes there and spent the entire time regretting the entrance fee we paid..

But the day got better after that.   He headed toward an area called the Garden of the Gods.  It is a park with amazing rock formations.  We pulled up to the first area and the kids told me that they would wait in the car )playing video games).  I could not beleive them and had to fore them to get out.  But once they did, they fell in absolute love with the place and I could not get them back into the car for hours.  Who knew that all I had to do to get them fresh air and exercise was to take them to Colorado.

I eventually manged to drag the kids back into the car and we drove around the park some more.  We didn't find any stops as magical as the first one so after enjoying our picnic lunch, we headed back out onto the highway.

We drove to a place called The North Pole and discovered that it was nothing more than a Christmas themed gift shop and amusement park, hardly worth pulling off the highway for.

We found another hiking trail in Colorado Springs but it still didn't compare to the Garden of the Gods so, by popular demand, we went back down to the fist climbing spot and enjoyed some more hiking and rock climbing.

By the time we arrived back in Denver, it was getting dark and we were too exhausted even to take a dip in the pool.  Who am I kidding, of course the kids swan again.  But no long after, we were fast asleep in our hotel room.