July 21, 2013 The north pole

Today's word is 'currently reading', but I think pictures of the North Pole are more interesting.

My sister, Sandy, and her son, Sam, had planned this trip for about 6 months.  Willow, Sam's daughter, was looking forward to coming to Colorado.  She really wanted to ride a horse, and to visit with all my horses.

The first thing we did, Sam and I, was to take Willow and Gabe to Santa's Workshop at the North Pole.

This is a kid's oriented amusement park located on the northern slope of Pikes Peak.  It is all Christmas oriented all year around.

The first good thing that happened, is that there was a sign that said if you were over 60, you could get in free.  Wow!  My lucky day!

First ride was a simple one in these old fashioned cars:

Somewhere shortly after we arrived, Gabe and Willow picked up a friend who tried to go with them on all the rides.  That is, until his family made him go with them.  He thought he had found someone fun to play with, but alas, his family had other ideas.  They did ride a couple of rides together though.

This picture was taken at the weird mirrors, that make you look long or fat or whatever.  It was fun to make faces into the mirrors.

Then we got to some of the better rides.  After the ferris wheel, yes I had to go with Gabe, each seat had to have someone over 16, and I was holding on too tight to take pictures on that.  Remember, we are on the side of the mountain, and the ferris wheel takes you even higher, kinda like hanging out in space.  But we did have a great view of the damage done across highway 24 by the Waldo Canyon fire last year. 

This ride was like a space ship, but it was a big swing...So they went pretty high, and they went on it twice, once in the front seat and once in the back seat.

This ride was the last of the big kids rides.  They went round and round, and had a rudder that they could move to make themselves go higher or lower.  Sam had to ride with Willow.  I guess you can see what he thought of it by the look on his face!

Gabe liked it so much that he rode it by himself, two times!

This last ride is like a ski lift, and you can see all over the park on it.  Sam was making faces again!

We had a lot of fun.  Unfortunately, my sister was not feeling well and didn't go on this trip.  Maybe she has already seen pictures from Sam, and maybe she'll read this.

Oh, yeah, the book I'm currently reading is "Genetics for dummies", since our family seems to have a major genetic problem.  You'll know something about that if you've been following me on facebook since the beginning of March.   Our drama wasn't over when we went on this excursion!