Megan’s Take
We started our day with mass at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Colorado Springs, and then we packed up and headed to Golden CO to see the Colorado Railroad Museum. It was a very cool detour and worth the stop. There’s a large train yard with various cars,
model railroad sets,
children’s play train sets to interact with, etc.
Best of all – we got to ride a train around the property, and the ride was short enough for our kids’ attention spans.
Overall, we all enjoyed it and would go back again when passing through the area.
We checked into our campground at Estes Park at Mary’s Lake – such a relief to be out of Colorado Springs. We’re right next to the bathroom and a cool playground.
We have more space on our campsite, and there are some cool rocks in the dirt here. It’s a good place to stay for this week.
Tonight we got dinner and ice cream downtown and stopped at a couple rock shops. One of them had a little duck pond behind it, and a woman feeding the ducks shared her feed with Emilia and Emmett. They were very excited about feeding the ducks piece by piece, and Emmett called out, “come here ducks! I have something tasty for you!” They made sure all the corn feed got distributed to the surrounding ducks.
Phil’s Take
The Colorado Railroad Museum was definitely the highlight of the day. This was by far the largest of these museums we’ve seen, and we’ve been to a few new. For the cars that they have restored, they have walked that fine line between looking authentic and too new very well. The car we rode on for our train ride was immaculate.
There was another car that was more authentic to the working men’s accommodations.
The train ride itself wasn’t long and wasn’t about the scenery. They built their own narrow gauge track around the perimeter of the museum property and use that. The ride does three complete passes before stopping. It does give you some closer views of things you can’t see as well from the pathways around the grounds. Emmett enjoyed watching it almost as much as he liked riding it.
I was a little bummed that they didn’t have the bigger model railroad outside working, because it’s quite good. They did have a model railroad that was HO scale downstairs in the main building that you could make run for a while by feeding it a quarter. I’m not sure why, but I didn’t get any pictures of that.
Most importantly the kids, and most especially Emmett, loved the museum. This was a good clip showing Emmett’s enthusiasm pretty much the whole way through the place.
The drive into Estes Park was fairly uneventful. There’s a fairly scenic canyon drive along US 36, but the real scenery isn’t there until you’re basically right in Estes Park. This was the descent down the final big hill before reaching Estes Park.
Around that duck pond behind the first rock shop we visited, there was the largest single piece of petrified wood we’ve seen the whole trip. They had tons of large specimens around that pond and in the collection being sold by that shop.
I’m looking forward to Rocky Mountain National Park tomorrow.
Here’s the gallery with today’s pictures.
