Denver
So, I’m a bit of an idiot and completely forgot to make this final post. Our last day was a lot of fun, but we didn’t get home until around midnight and I put off writing this post.
Our first stop on our last day of the honeymoon was a visit to the Colorado Railroad Museum. We had intentionally put off visiting until Tuesday as the weekend we were in town was their final Day Out with Thomas event where the museum would have been absolutely packed with activity and giddy children excited to see (narrow-gauge dummy) Thomas. We didn’t want to experience that, but wanted to take in the local railroad history displayed. However, we couldn’t completely escape it because we arrived to witness Thomas being kidnapped!
I can share a lot of interesting information regarding these dummy Thomas cabs that roam the country bringing children joy and bringing them into railroading, but that’s a story for another time. After taking some photos of the silly “locomotive” on the flatbed, we made our way into the museum proper where the staff was absolutely overwhelmed due to yet another computer glitch messing up their ticket purchases for their upcoming Polar Express themed days. We purchased some magnets and decided to explore the museum for a while before bothering Matthew Isaacks, the man who helped me when I experienced a computer issue preordering our entry to the museum months ahead of time. There was an excellent HO scale layout in the basement with a cool mix of standard and narrow gauge models. Outside has a lot of neat artificats covering local railroading history that you can actually interact with and touch, a rare encounter at a railroad museum. We explored their UP passenger cars, hopped in the cab of No. 74 where I got to teach my lovely wife a bit about locomotive operation, and meandered around the museum grounds for a while. Seeing the older Pikes Peak stock was really cool and a reminder that while the new cars are comfortable, they’re not as cool the old ones! Finally, we got Mr. Isaacks out of the office and explored the museum grounds with a little guided tour. We talked shop in their roundhouse, learning about the daily operations of the museum, and were able to get a nice picture in the cab of their baby, RGS 20. The really exciting part, however, is while we were outside talking about the turntable, I decided to just ask if I could run it.
I was met with an immediate yes and promptly shoved the turntable. That was a really cool experience and one that you don’t normally get in a museum. To directly interact with their equipment and use it was an amazing thing to be able to do. We chatted some more, smiled, and parted ways to return home to Nebraska. Of course, I returned to the main building to leave a decent donation for the museum because it felt right.
We weren’t quite ready to hit the road though. My absolutely wonderful wife was gracious enough to let me make a quick stop at a local hobby shop to see what Denver had to offer in the realm of model trains. I picked up a new to me boxcar kit, a couple of neat 1/87 scale vehicles, and talked shop with the blessing of my wife. Then we did some shopping in some outlet stores we don’t have in Nebraska and picked up some new clothing items before hitting the road for real. 6 hours doesn’t feel like much until you’re reminded what real traffic is like. It’s been a blessing living in Nebraska, let me tell you. Once we escaped Denver traffic, it was smooth sailing in cruise control all the way to Ole’s for supper around sundown. Of course, we had to get ourselves prime rib since we had so little of it while on our trip. It was delicious and I will never regret getting prime rib, but I did regret eating as much as I did because it turned the last three-to-four hours of our return trip into a fight for survival. A full belly meant my body was ready for bed, so I had to fight myself to get us home, but I did and we arrived home safely to our cats who were very mad at us for leaving! The only thing left was to return the rental car in the morning. We loved our honeymoon, but it felt amazing to be home and sleep in our own bed.
This will be it for updates on the blog until I decide to sit down and sift through the honeymoon photos to display some of our best in a new post here. For those of your who were interested to keep up with our exploits, thank you for joining us. To the future Tom and Anna who will go back and read this in the future, remember all the fun that was had and how close you felt. Never let that love slip away.
– Tom