July | 2015 | Visionary Art by Carmen Alicia

One of my husband’s life long dreams was to see Mount Rushmore!

My daughter and my grandson joined us and it turned out to be one of the best vacations ever!!

We started out going to Santa Fe and spending a couple of days. We’ve been to Santa Fe, but didn’t have the time to look around. This time, we spent the whole day enjoying the city. Here are a few pictures:

My husband has heard so much about the Loretto Chapel where the mysterious spiral staircase is located that we made our first stop here:

We also did the tourist thing of shopping for bargains:

haa haa, I don’t know what I was demonstrating,

We couldn’t leave Santa Fe without going to the Georgia O’Keeffe museum. So inspiring!

We checked this place out because it had smoothies,

I ended up having a virgin red chile bloody mary, yumm!

Having a great dinner!

Now on to Colorado to stay at our time share near Vail. This is the scenery on our way there.

The closer we got, the more snow we started seeing on the road.

We finally arrived at our destination and were glad we left the snow behind!

We had nice weather all around and got to enjoy long walks to the lake,

and the creek,

The water was perfect for white water rafting!

The lake was peaceful, though.

enjoying nature,

Tulips

A bee searching for honey in a lavender bush.

and pretending we were kids again!

We sat at this cozy garden and watched people go by.

We also visited Eagle, down the road and admired the bronze art on the sidewalk.

Midweek we went to Denver to pick up our grandson and went through the one mile long Eisenhower tunnel.

After picking up Sage from the airport, we went to visit our old neighborhood in Aurora, Colorado. We hadn’t been there since 1983 so we couldn’t find our previous homes. After some searching and googling, we found our house on Olathe St. in the Mission Viejo neighborhood and the Berry home in Smokey Hill.

We couldn’t leave Denver without visiting Casa Bonita.

This restaurant used to be a Safeway store and was remodeled and converted into an old Mexican villa, complete with caves, waterfall, and a gorilla.

My daughter was reminiscing how she and her brother would love to go there not for the food, but for the entertainment. The menu hasn’t changed a bit; it’s still not very good, but eatable.

When you get to your table, they present you with a flag you can raise when it’s time for a refill or some of their famous sopaipillas.

We headed back to Avon Colorado and began the fun part for Zonia and Sage. They went hiking, biking, and water rafting!

Biking near Vail Valley

At the end of the week they went white water rafting on the Eagle River, but I haven’t been able to find their pictures online.

When we lived in Colorado, we used to visit the towns in the rockies – our favorite town was Estess Park.

This is a picture of the famous Stanley Hotel.

We drove to Cheyenne, Wyoming and went to an Hispanic event. It was their first so it was held at a small park. Adjacent to the park is a railroad museum and this is where we took this picture. I’m too short for this!!

The next day we started on our trip to North Dakota. There was so much rain and flooding we had to be rerouted and it took two more hours to get to Keystone. This is where both Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse memorial are.

Since it was still early enough in the afternoon, we decided to go to the Crazy Horse memorial because it was on the way to Keystone.

Can you believe this is as far as they’ve gotten on the monument? Everyone’s question is “When will it be finished” the answer from the guide is always “When we get enough funding.”

This is a replica of how it will look when it’s completely done!

You can pick a rock from the left over rocks to take home. No, Sage, you can’t take that on the plane!!

Are you kidding me? You want to take that big rock home, honey?

Finally made it to Mount Rushmore. The monument is a lot smaller than the Crazy Horse Monument. It fits in the head of the warrior.

The family in front of the monument..

…and this is a closeup after walking up 252 steps!!

We were all so happy to be there finally!

We just had to stop at Sturgis where they hold the biggest motorcycle rally in the world!!

But the biggest highlight of my summer was when my sister and I attended the Imitate Jesus Regional Convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Best convention to date!!