Swetsville Zoo

7/01/2007
This "Zoo" is just a few miles north of Loveland and just off I25. This man "Bill Swets" never had any training as a welder but he lived on a farm. As any farmer knows you need to know how to weld or your going to need a lot of duck tape and baling wire. :-) Bill also was fireman for 22 years at the near by town of Timnath, Co. There are about to 200 sculptures. Bill doesn't work at it as hard as he use to but he still adds a sculpture now and then. A visit to the Zoo is free but it is nice to leave a donation since he gets no funding from any agency. These are just a sample of the pictures I have. There are about 100 in my picture album under the album Swetsville. The title on the pictures in the album are for the most part the name Bill has given then. The first name is it's nick name the second name is the scientific name. :-) There are about 30 pictures that I didn't get the name for even though we went back the second time to get then. Most of those you can tell what they are or you can give them your own name.

Entrance to the Zoo, Ying and Yang, Dragons.

Harry the hitch hiker, sub-human.

Lucky, Sea Serpent.

Puff the two headed dragon.

A variety of sculptures. Remember to checkout my picture album for more of these great sculptures. From the zoo we went to the Anheuser Bush Brewery for a tour. I have been to four of the Budweiser breweries some of which no longer give tours. There are still five breweries in the US that give tours. The main brewery is in St. Louis were it started. I have been to it three times, always get my free samples. :-)

The front of the brewery.

The brew house and the grain storage facilities.

The mixing vats where they put in the rice, barley malt and water the hops go in later in an other vat.

Can filler, note that every thing is stainless steel. It fills four hundred cans a minute. Bottles are now becoming more popular but they can only fill 300 bottles a minute. Unfortunately my picture of the bottle filler was too blurry to show.

These are the beechwood aging vats. I can't remember how long they store it in these but I think it's a couple of weeks.

The famous Clydesdale horses.

An early 1900 ad. How times have changed. Today she would be in a bikini.

We didn't do much the next couple of days. I did get my computer fixed on July 3rd thank goodness, so I can now update my blog as you can see. We left Loveland July 5th for Pueblo to attend the FCRV National Rally. More about that later.

Poudre River

6/30/2007
We drove up Poudre River Canyon. The canyon is 10 miles north of Fort Collins. It appears to be a good fishing stream. There were campgrounds all along the river and fishermen out fly fishing. The canyon is just as pretty as Big Thompson Canyon but not as long.

View on the drive in the Poudre River Canyon.

Another view of the Poudre River.

Kayaking on the Poudre River.

Rafting on the Poudre River.

Rafting on the Poudre River. We stopped at the forest service visitor center in the Roosevelt Forest. The gentleman there told us about the Buda Retreat and gave us directions to it. He also told us that it was free but they did have a place for donations. He said that we should be sure to make a donation because he didn't as a soon as he got to his car it started raining and he didn't catch any fish for a week. :-) We had to go back down the road we came up on. Then we had to go about 15 miles on a forest service dirt road. The dirt road was the smoothest dirt road I have ever driven on and there was no dust.

When we got there the lady at the gate told us that it was a 2/3 of a mile walk. I told her I could not walk that far so she gave us a pass to drive there. She told us that we were welcome to eat lunch there in their lunch tent and that they served about 400 people every day. After visiting the Stupa we did eat lunch there. It was pork chops two vegetables and a salad. We did leave a donation.

This is the Great Stupa at the Shambhala Mountain Center. They offer residential programs in meditation, yoga, the arts, Buddhism and other spiritual traditions.

This is the statue inside the Stupa. I expected to see the Buda that you see in all the gift shops with the big belly. I don't know any thing about this statue, I e-mailed them and ask them about it but they haven't answered it yet.

These are some of the tents that the people stay in that are taking the classes. They also have some cabins people can stay in.

Rocky Mountain National Park

6/28/2007
The drive to Rocky Mountain NP from Loveland is about 40 miles. But the first 30 are through the most beautiful canyon, Big Thompson Canyon. If you remember this is the canyon that had the flood in 1976 that killed 150 people. You wouldn't know it now the way people have built there home right along the river again. Unfortunately it is so narrow that it is difficult to get pictures. Peggy got some video while we were driving through the canyon but didn't get and stills. At the end of the canyon you enter Estes Park a pure tourist town but very neat and pretty. We stopped at the visitor center and watched a 18 minute video about the park and bought some books, hat pin and walking stick medallion.

This is the view from the first pull off in the park.

Another pull off view where we meet some bikers that were biking to the top of Trail Ridge Road. Trail Ridge Road is the highest continuous road in the US. It tops out at 12,200 feet.

This is an example of how the road twists and turns up the mountain.

This one is above tree line in the alpine region.

This little fellow a Hoary Marmot live here at between 11,000 and 12,000 feet.

At 12,000 feet on June 28th there still is plenty of snow and no telling when it will snow again. It could be tomorrow. It can snow at any time of the year here.

Beautiful scenery, you can tell where the tree line is. This is up around 12,000 feet.

This is the visitor center at the top of the Trail Ridge Road. Note the timbers on the roof to hold it from blowing off. Winds up here can exceed 200 miles an hour.

This is the trail to the highest point on the Trail Ridge Road. Unfortunately at this altitude we were not able to climb it. The view from the visitor center is spectacular enough. From here we went down the west side of the park. About half way down we stopped at picnic site and had lunch. What a great way and place to have a picnic. Instead of going back the way we came we decided to go around the south end of the park. You wouldn't believe the beautiful roads we were on. Curvy (there's that word again), windy U turns but oh so pretty, green forests every where. We drove through another canyon and found a city in it where there wasn't any room for a city. There was one road through the canyon and one on the other side of the stream. But what modern building, naturally they were Casinos and hotels it was called Central City. I was told it's claim to fame is it's Opera. The round trip took us about 200 miles. By the time we got home we were wore out and decided to rest the next day.

Riverton 6/26/2007

6/26/2007
We left Gardiner early this morning heading for Loveland, Colorado. We had to drive through Yellowstone to head south. I choose to take the west part of the loop because it was not as mountainous and they weren't working on it. Taking that route we crossed the continental divide three times.

This was the second time we crossed it.

This little pond is rather unique in that it drains into both the Pacific and Gulf water shed.

We also had to drive through a part of the Teton NP. These two pictures were taken at one of the pull offs in the park. The view is of course the Teton Mountains.

Also a view of the Teton Mountains from the same pull off. From here we drove to Riverton Wyoming and spent the night in the Wal-mart parking lot. Riverton is in the Wind River Indian Reservation.

6/27/2007

From Riverton we took State Road 135. It was very hilly and I saw some signs I never saw before. They have gates to close the road in the winter when the snow and wind get too bad.

One of the sign we saw when we were 15 miles out of Riverton said "Road closed go back to Riverton". I was sure glad it wasn't winter. When we finally got to interstate 80 we drove one exit on it and then it was closed. We had to take a detour onto old route 30 which meant we would have to go an extra 30 miles for a total of 130 to Laramie. The road wasn't that great either and all the 18 wheelers were flying by me like I was standing still. The road from Laramie to Cheyenne goes over a really high mountain. When we got to the top it was very foggy and windy. Fortunately it wasn't very far until we came back down out of the mountains and into Cheyenne. Cheyenne to Loveland was a short trip on interstate 25. The campground "Loveland RV Park" is only a couple of blocks off route 25 on route 34. Route 34 is the route that goes to Estes Park and Rocky Mountain NP. We are scheduled to stay until July 5th when we will go to Pueblo, Co. for the FCRV National Rally.