Train to the Treeline

Last night was an unusual luxury on this trip – we could sleep in pretty much as late as we wanted. Instead of having to drag myself from bed at 7 AM so I could do my e-mail and such before either getting on the road or being at a room at 9:20 or thereabouts to prepare for a 10 AM meeting, I slept until after 9 AM. Lisa, unfortunately, did not sleep well at all – she didn't get to sleep until after 3 AM – and she hasn’t slept well for weeks, thanks to the tinnitus. Worse, sleeping pills make her nauseous and skitterish, thus producing the opposite of the desired effect.

We had a moderately sedate morning before bestirring ourselves from the hotel room. Our plan was to ride the 2 PM train of the Leadville, Colorado & Southern, but we also were considering visiting the National Mining Museum and Hall of Fame in the morning. I also wanted to see about finding out why my wireless wouldn’t connect. As I mentioned earlier, I fixed the latter, but a series of other delays meant that we decided to skip the museum and grab something to eat before the 2 ½ -hour train ride.

( We’ve been riding on the railroad )

After the train ride, we went to the Golden Burro Café on Leadville’s main street for a more substantial lunch. Looking in the café's gift shop, Lisa spotted a four-volume VHS collector’s edition of Leadville’s colorful history. She asked to buy it. After some confusion, the counter people said, "The box is empty. We have the DVD!" Lisa didn’t want the DVD, so they lost a sale.

Then it was back to the hotel room, where we stuffed our last ten days of dirty laundry into my rolling bag and went to the laundromat we spotted last night. I brought my computer and looked for a wi-fi signal. The laundromat didn’t have wi-fi, but the auto body shop next door did, and I seemed to have connected to their unsecured signal; unfortunately, it didn’t seem to be actually connected to the internet, so I settled down to compose this entry offline while we waited through our laundry.

( Waylaid by pinball machines again )

We collected our dinner in the form of a pizza from High Mountain Pies. These folks make a good pizza, but they seem to have difficulty keeping the ingredients straight. Last night Lisa ordered a pineapple, shrimp, and mushroom pizza and they put pepperoni instead of pineapple. Tonight she ordered the same thing and they left off the shrimp. So while the food tasted good, you have to watch what they're actually putting on the pizzas.

Finally, we stopped to get milk from a convenience store, then went back to the hotel, where we folded our clothes, ate our dinner, and then, despite the late hour, went out and walked up and down Leadville's main street. Lisa amused herself by counting how many bars are on this street (including those one block off the main street): 8.

After a shaky start, we ended up having a wonderful time on one of the most scenic journeys I can recall. Colorado is of course full of wonderful scenery, but this is a trip I could recommend. There’s lots of other interesting things here in Leadville, and I’m sort of sorry we aren’t spending another couple of days to explore them, but we still have things to do and see, and it’s a long way back to the west coast.

Miles to Go Before I Read Again

Incidentally, I'm rather looking forward to having some time -- probably in a week or so -- where I may actually have a chance to go back and read other people's convention and travel reports that are showing up on my rapidly-growing lists of unread things. I've not had time to write all of what I want, let alone read anything else. A few high-priority e-mails get answered, and the rest are sitting unread. So for instance the pileup on the SMOFS list is now around 300 and growing, and there are other similar piles of unread material out there. Good thing I got my mailbox (which has a 100 MB limit) down to about 30% before this trip started.

Up and At 'Em

The Alps Motel here in Leadville is a nice little place, and I'd certainly consider staying here again should I ever come through the area; however, it has a 10 AM check-out and a rather strongly-worded statement that implies that it will cost another day if we're even one minute late checking out, so it seems prudent to take no chances. Rather than lazing around the room and then rushing to leave, I'm shutting down the computer now and getting moving on cleaning up and moving out -- not a simple task as many of my shirts are still hanging in the closet where Lisa put them because they were still slightly damp from the laundry last night.

Next stop after we leave Leadville: Grand Junction, Colorado. Because that's a relatively short leg, we have time to look at things today, but not too much time, as I'd really like to get to bed early tonight, and besides, Lisa has some computer work for me to do that I suspect will take longer than expected.

Posting Quickly Before it Fails Again

I'd like to write a bit more about our day today, but for some strange reason, the internet access at this hotel is randomly failing to load various address. There's no pattern to it that I can discern. For the moment it seems to be allowing access to the LJ posting page, so I'll just say we made it to Grand Junction and leave it at that.