Whit's End-My Favorite Place

Hey ya'll, it's Annie and they're letting me post about our time at Focus on the Family's Whit's End that we went to on Friday. Focus on the Family is a ministry in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  It's a really nice place with a soda fountain, a two story corkscrew slide, a playground, a puppet theater, a dress up room and a stage.  In the corkscrew slide you wear a bag over your legs and socks over your arms (I hope they are clean).  Your head hits the sides of the slide as you go down.  The Whit's soda fountain serves snacks and ice cream.  I had a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone and it was spectacular!!  Inside of Whit's End we met the Johnson Family from Nashville, Tennessee, and guess what, they're homeschoolers too! The playground reminded me of a Burger King playground with a slide and an airplane.  A model of Jason Whitaker's airplane is downstairs and it's a fun place to play.  Daniel and I put on a puppet show for my mom and sister.  We used two fish puppets, two alligators, a horse, a dog and a parrot. If you ever make it to Colorado Springs, you must go to Whit's End; it's my favorite place on the trip so far!!  Miss you all...

annie

Enjoying an Ice Cream in Whit's End

The Johnson Family from Nashville, TN.

Carmeuse Sand Company Tour

Hello all of you avid blog readers! As you may have already guessed by my salutation, this is Ben. We went to a sand processing facility today August 26, 2011 in Colorado Springs. We have an Aunt in Augusta, GA who works as an accountant for Carmeuse sand company. She pulled some strings and pretty soon we were on our way to the great sand dunes of Colorado Springs, man made of course. In the infamous words of our tour guide Mr. George Munger, sand processing (and moving) is “a bunch of overgrown boys with overgrown toys in a giant sandbox”. This is a true statement because they use loaders and dump trucks to move their sand around the sandbox. Everywhere you looked there were conveyer belts, sand silos, and chutes which sand came out of to fill trucks and trains. We had a chance to get out of the trucks we were riding in and play in the large sand piles. Daniel and Anna climbed to the top of a pile while Josh and I dug tunnels. We had a great time playing in the sand and meeting the nice workers there. All in all we had a fun time!

Anna in the loader

Josh "driving" the loader

Don't pick Daniel up!

Us with our tour guide, Mr. George Munger

Garden of The Gods, Colorado Springs, Colorado

Hello All!
We got into Colorado Springs Wednesday night and are staying at Mountaindale RV Resort. Yesterday, Thursday, we did school in the morning and went to the famous Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. if you don't know, here is a little history of the Gardens: The founder of Colorado Springs urged his friend, Charles Perkins, the head of the westward growing railroad, to establish a home in the Garden of the Gods. Perkins, never actually made it to Colorado Springs, but he did buy the land, unfortunately he died before he could build anything on it.  His children conveyed the 480 acres to the City of Colorado Springs and asked that it would be known forever as: "where it shall remain free to the public, where no intoxicating liquors shall be manufactured, sold, or dispensed, where no building or structure shall be erected except those necessary to properly care for, protect, and maintain the area as a public park." So you Georgia people know what our dirt is like there: red clay. Well, these huge boulders look like they are made from 'Georgia Red Clay' as my family calls it! Here are some of the pictures we took!

Ben, Josh and Anna on the rocks

Josh, Me and Ben on more rocks

Daniel and Anna under a rock

Skyline Drive, Canon City Colorado

Hey there all ye friendly people! It’s me Ben Torre the awesome. Well you might be wondering what we’ve been doing these last few days well that’s what I BT will tell you. We were out crusin’ in Canon City Colorado one fine evening when we decided to take the scenic Colorado Skyline Drive. Well well that’s all fine and dandy but it’s a lot more than just a drive. Where there are dinosaur tracks from the bottom up and rocks to climb on. The tracks were pretty cool but I didn’t think that they were all they were stuck up to be.  But that’s not all we did no, no, no that’s not all; we also saw the lights of 3 different cities 3 can you imagine that? The light was fading quickly as I took this silhouette photo of Dad, Mom, Daniel, and Josh. Well as we were starting our return trip down from the nosebleed section I was stunned to find out that we had been driving on a ridge the entire time! There were some really switch-backs on the way down. And we all agreed that our 34 foot recreational vehicle couldn’t make those turns. All in all it was a pretty cool drive.   

Anna and I didn't go on  the drive, we were just too tired after our rafting trip earlier that day, Monday. Here are the pictures Ben took. 

The cities at night

Sunset over the mountains.....

Silhouettes of Mom, Josh, Daniel and Dad 

Posting a Comment

We've received lots of emails, texts and phone calls saying that people can't post a comment because they don't have a Google account.  Here's how to do it.  Click on the 'comments' link below the post you wish to comment on.  Below the comments (if any) there is the box to post a comment in, type it up. Below the comment box is the option  'comment as' second from the bottom is Name/URL, choose this option. Type in your name, press preview below the comment box, type the security code, if it comes up, and hit publish post. This should work.  Just let us know if you have any problems! PS: Don't forget to vote, only 2 days left!

Colorado White Water Rafting

Hello Everyone,

White water rafting was so much fun, Dad and Josh had been before, but for Ben and me this was our first time.  Tom, Josh, Ben and Gabrielle were in a raft doing the rougher rapids while Christine, Daniel and Anna had a little calmer ride. The ride took 3 hours to go through the 9-mile stretch of gorge. Here are some pictures from white water rafting.

Ben all geared up and ready to go!

Josh jumping off a rock about halfway through the trip

Josh, Ben and Gabrielle after the tour

Inside the Royal Gorge halfway through our raft trip

Starlite Campground, Canon City, Colorado

Hello All,

We stayed at Starlite Monday and Tuesday nights. Starlite campground was a retro theme campground with trailers you could rent from the 40's and 50's. There were also cars from that time period. The owners had collected the trailers and cars, realized that they couldn't camp in that many and decided to rent them out.  The campground was very close to Royal Gorge, had a beautiful mountain view and very quiet. Here are some of the pictures of the trailers and also the landscape we woke up to Tuesday morning!

I"m standing right out side of our steps of the RV!

The "Pink Flamingo" camper

More of the "Pink Flamingo"

The Grill Masters at work.....