Last Friday when we were in Denver…
The Lady and some of her friends with white fur – Ms. Joni, Ms. Becca, and Ms. Cindy -wanted to go shopping at a special store where you buy the fancy sticks and string that they like to use to make stuff. Ms. Becca is just learning how to play with sticks and strings. She went along to look at all of the pretty string and because she likes to hang around with The Lady, Ms. Cindy, and Ms. Joni.
Mr. Guy, Mr. Scott F (Ms. Joni’s brother) and Mr. Scott G (Ms. Cindy’s Mr. Guy) don’t know how to play with sticks and string and they don’t have any interest in learning. The boys would all much rather play with trains. Since I am a boy, I spent my day with them. I think that a little blue and orange furry monster with sticks and string might be a disaster. I like it when Ms. Joni and The Lady work their magic with the string and I end up with sweaters and hats that are already made!
I knew a little bit about trains. I had been on the light rail train at home in Dallas. It was a big train, not the size of a toy. When Mr. Guy told me that we were going to go see trains, I thought they were going to be too big for this little monster to play with. Mr. Guy explained that he and the Mr. Scotts like to play with model trains. Model trains are trains that look just like the big trains but are much smaller. Mr. Guy says he doesn’t have any of these little model trains anymore. He did when he was younger. The Mr. Scotts told me that they belong to model railroad clubs where they live. I got a bit confused. Railroads? I thought that we were talking about trains! Mr Guy explained that trains are the individual cars and the railroad is everything having to do with trains – all the train cars and the track put together in one big package. He said its like when the ladies play with their sticks and strings it is called knitting. Knitting means the sticks, the string, the pattern, and the playing with the sticks and strings! I think I now understand.
So while the ladies looked at string, we guys went to the Colorado Railroad Museum. I was a little confused again. I didn’t have my dictionary to look up words and I wasn’t sure what a museum was. So Mr. Guy told me that a museum is a place where people keep special things that they don’t want to be damaged, or that they want lots of people to be able to see. The museum is a place where things are kept safe when they get old or can’t be used anymore.
An art museum has art in it and a science museum has science things in it. I asked if that meant our house was a museum because we have lots of art and things on the walls and The Lady says that there are science experiments in the refrigerator. Mr. Guy said not really because we do not preserve our stuff so that lots of people can come see it. He said that our house may be kind of a private museum for us and our friends. But, not a science museum. No one wants to see the experiments in our refrigerator.
Mr Guy told me that the railroad museum has lots of train cars – old ones and newer ones – and special ones that people might not get to see unless they visit the museum. I understand better now…things in a museum are there so that lots and lots of people can see them, even little blue and orange monsters!
W were on our way! Mr. Guy, the Mr. Scotts and I headed to the train museum. The first thing we did was walk to find the bus that would take us to the station to wait for a real train that we rode to the museum! That was a lot of ways of transportation already!
I have to say that Mr Guy is not as good at picture taking as The Lady but he did his best.
The Lady and her girlfriends were shopping in Denver. We went all the way to another city. It is called Golden. Golden did not look very golden to me, but Mr Guy said it got its name because they dig up lots of gold there. I wondered if we would get any gold. In case you are wondering…we did not.
When we got off of the train, Mr Scott G thought there was a button we could push to get us to the museum. He said someone had told him about this button. I wasn’t sure about that…a magic button? Mr Guy explained that it was supposed to be a button to let someone know that we were there to visit the museum. I sort of understood this idea to be like our doorbell at home, but we never found any button, magic or otherwise. We did, however, see a green van and the man inside agreed to take us to the Visitors Center, for free! I thought that maybe this was a magic man driving a magic van. Nothing is ever free! Nope. Our train tickets allowed us to ride in the magic green van. Though I guess that means that the van was not really free because we had to buy tickets to ride the train. It just felt free and maybe a little bit magic.
The van took us to the Golden Visitor’s center…not a golden visitor’s center, and not the train museum. We looked around there a little. There was a big statue of a bear.
Mr Guy told me that there are lots of bears in the woods near Golden, but that the bears rarely ever come into town. I was glad to hear that because this was a very big statue of a very scary looking bear. Mr Guy said that the real bears are the same size as the statue! I did not want to meet one of them!
We also saw a dragon! Well, it was a statue too. I asked Mr. Guy if dragons and bears were friends and if there were dragons in the woods too. He assured me that I did not have to worry about meeting a real dragon.
Mr Guy said this dragon was made to honor the president of a special club. I wondered what kind of president would make people think of a dragon. I kept that thought to myself.
I was beginning to think that the only train we were going to see was the one that we rode to Golden. Fortunately, Mr Scott F used his phone to call someone named Ooh Bear, who he said would come and give us a ride to the museum. Mr. Guy had just said that bears didn’t come into the city and he also said that bears are big and scary. I wasn’t sure why Mr. Scott F called one of them on his cellphone to come get us! As it turned out, we were lucky. The Ooh Bear that he called was not a real bear. He was a man. I wonder why his mom named him Ooh Bear. Oh well, the Ooh Bear man seemed very nice, though his car was a little small for all five of us. But, he got us to the Colorado Railroad Museum and that was what was important!
When we got there, I saw all of these big boxes and things I did not know about all around. Mr Guy said that they are trains and that they once carried lots of people and lots of things all over the place. They are what we came to see.
I was very excited because the first thing we did at the museum was buy a new shirt for me! Ms. Roz sold us my shirt and she agreed to be one of the people in my 100 people project. She sells tickets and other things at the museum too.
We then headed downstairs. A model railroad club keeps their special train stuff there. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to see. And then…Wow! They have a whole set up of small trains, just like Mr. Guy and The Mr. Scotts said there would be. I had never seen trains like these before. They were small but looked just like the big ones that were all over outside. Mr Guy told me that the big ones worked just like these little ones except that the little ones were for people who had to pretend with trains rather than work with the big real ones. He said these are the kind of trains that the Mr. Scotts have. Mr Scott G was looking carefully at all the details of the trains.
When we were done inside, we went outside where there were more train cars to see. Mr Guy showed me how some of the cars were for carrying people and some were carrying things. There were also special trains called engines. The engine is was what makes the train cars full of people and things go. The person who drives the engine is called an engineer. I pretended that I was the engineer!
There were so many cars to see that Mr Guy and the Mr Scotts just couldn’t get pictures of all of them. Mr Guy tried to take a picture of the two of us outside a caboose, but it didn’t really work. He told me that the last car on a train was called a caboose and it was a place for the people who worked on the train to eat and sleep when they were on long trips.
Mr Guy also told me that when he was a little monster like me, his dad worked for the railroad. Mr. Guy’s dad did not drive the trains. He was a lawyer who worked with people who had been hurt while working for the railroad or who had had an accident with a train. I don’t think I would want to be one of those people!
Mr Guy shared that he too had worked on the railroad one summer. He fixed train tracks. Mr. Guy showed me how the train cars at the museum were sitting on metal rails. The rails then sit on a metal plate and that plate sits on a big piece of wood. Mr Guy said those big pieces of wood are called ties. I thought ties were something that you wore around your neck. I certainly wouldn’t want to wear one of those ties. They look heavy. I bet they would choke me! Mr Guy explained that they are called ties because they tie the rails together. Big nails, called spikes, hold the plate and the rail on the tie. The rails, ties, and plates are called tracks. Mr Guy told me to look at where the tracks ran off into the distance so I could see how they looked like a path for the train to follow.
The last thing we saw at the museum was called a garden railroad. This was sort of like the little trains inside, but the train was bigger and ran outside in a real garden with pretty plants and flowers. Mr. Guy explained that trains come in all sizes, from tiny model ones all the way up to the great big real ones. He said there are even some that are little blue and orange monster sized like me! I asked him if we cold get one of those He said we would not have a place for one that big. That made me a little sad. I thought it would be fun to be the engineer on my very own train.
After we had seen everything at the museum, Mr. Scott F called our friend Ooh Bear again to take us back to the visitor center. The guy who came to get us this time was a different person and in a different car than the first Mr. Ooh Bear! There are two mothers that named their children Ooh Bear??? I guess it is a Colorado thing. I need to remember to ask Mr Guy or The Lady about that.
After we got back to the visitor center, everyone wanted lunch before we loaded back in the not-so-magic green van, and then the train, and then the bus, and then walked back to the hotel.
Mr Guy told me he was sorry he did not get more pictures. I told him that was ok. I had lots of fun and was glad he and the Mr Scotts took me along. I think I had more fun with them than I would have had looking at string with the ladies.
I sure was a tired little monster when we got back to the hotel. I went right to bed and slept all night long.
