Why’d they build this ghost town so far away?

April 17, 2014 Comments Off read Attractions, Colorado, Mountain, Travel, USA, West

When I saw the brochure for “Ghost Town Wild West Museum” near Colorado Springs, I was under the impression that it was actually a ghost town with a wild west museum inside, something along the lines of Cripple Creek, only with something to do there other than gamble and be depressed. Now, the thought crossed my mind that it was awfully close to a major-ish city to be a ghost town, but my pressed penny-loving lizard brain pushed that thought away. When we pulled into the parking lot and saw one building, I knew I was right to be suspicious.

The Ghost Town Wild West Museum is essentially a small-scale wild west town built inside of a warehouse. This isn’t to say it’s bad, it’s just not an actual ghost town, no matter how many times it says “authentic” in the brochure. It reminded me a lot of “The Streets of Yesterday” in The House on the Rock, but on a much lesser scale. After we paid our entry fee, I asked the employee if they had a pressed penny machine. She looked at me as though I had just sprouted a second head and said snottily, “We don’t have anything like that here.” I felt embarrassed until I walked in and saw that HALF THE DAMN PLACE WAS COIN-OPERATED.

All of these machines, the shooting gallery, EVERYTHING cost extra and was coin-operated, but no, I could see how they’d be above something like a pressed penny machine. What bothers me is that they don’t have the decency to tell you outside that you need another ten dollars in quarters to see the attractions inside. House on the Rock also had a mess of coin-operated items, but they tell you in advance that you’ll need tokens and they even give you a handful. The Ghost Town Wild West Museum doesn’t even have an ATM if you wanted to withdraw cash to do these things, and then they have the audacity to have an animatronic prisoner who begs you for money to (I am not making this up) buy a gun.

So on this “authentic” sign, we learn that old-timey miners used backwards letters to evoke a sense of false whimsy, like the ‘r’ in Toys ‘r’ Us.

Also note the old-timey, authentic christmas lights.

Old timey authentic ghost town or hipster’s living room? YOU DECIDE.

I told Jason to rob the bank, and with each progressive photo, I told him to make a meaner face. Meaner. MEANER! MEANER!

This animatronic guy claimed to have a cure for everything except baldness in men and “the gossip habit” in women. Fuck you, old timey asswad.

Please tell me this is the etymology of the phrase “horse pills”: human and horse-shared medicine.

If you get the used soap, just consider that you’re getting pubes thrown in FOR FREE.

Old timey town or a hipster’s living room? YOU DECIDE.

This little girl is going to learn an important lesson about co-pays and deductibles, because this old timey doctor doesn’t work for free.

I am going to install a skinny mirror in my house and use it exclusively. I’d better eat ice cream for breakfast again, I just can’t seem to gain weight!

I really like Chester A. Arthur’s taste in bedroom sets, but his taste in quilts was apparently ghastly.

For an additional fee (surprise!), you can have your name printed into an old-timey newspaper. I decided they’d gotten enough out of me already and that a little photo editing would suit me just as well.

It’s cold and there are wolves after me: The Manitou Cliff Dwellings

April 14, 2014 Comments Off read Attractions, Colorado, Everything is Terrible, Mountain, Travel, USA, West

When I visited the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center, The Manitou Cliff Dwellings were specifically called out by the employee as being completely fake and nothing more than a tourist trap. At the time, I didn’t have the resources to investigate this claim properly, and I figured that since we were already in the area, we should still go see it. Their promotional materials were a mixed bag, part of them stating that at least the gift shop and museum portion were “faithfully designed and constructed in the architectural style of the Pueblo Indians, descendants of the Anasazi” and part of them stating that they are “a rare historical treasure. Preserved under a protective red sandstone overhang, authentic Anasazi cliff dwellings, built more than 700 years ago, await you here.” Of course they want you to believe that the cliff dwellings themselves are authentic, they even throw in some mumbo-jumbo about “feel[ing] the spirits of the people who lived, worked, and communed in such spaces centuries ago.” A little research uncovered that the truth of the matter is that no Pueblo peoples actually dwelled in these particular cliff dwellings, or even anywhere near the area–the Manitou Cliff Dwellings were constructed in the early 1900s from stones shipped hundreds of miles from a collapsed site in Southwestern Colorado, in the style of the dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park. This would explain why this “rare historical treasure” is not a national monument, and is instead privately held. Additionally, many of the contemporary Pueblo peoples do not like being referred to as the Anasazi, which is Navajo for “ancient enemy,” so I guess really nothing about this site is respectful. And I gave them money. Damn it!

In the museum, Jason said “I made one of those!” “What, you did an entire stone-rubbed pot?” “No, I never got it past the coiled turd stage. But it was a magnificent pot all the same.”

The best part by far was not even cliff dwelling related, it was paying an extra five bucks to pet and photograph the Timber Wolf hybrids on site to promote Colorado Wolf Adventures. All of their wolf dogs are rescues (they don’t and won’t breed, only rescue), and their aim is to provide wolf education to the general public, who mostly view them solely as predators, so people will get excited about protecting and conserving this necessary part of the food chain.

Overall verdict: Colorado Wolf Adventures is a worthwhile organization, and you shouldn’t feel badly about giving them your money. The Manitou Cliff Dwellings, on the other hand, are constructed from real stones on a web of lies, and if you’re looking for actual historical Pueblo structures, go to Mesa Verde instead.

The Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center

April 7, 2014 Comments Off read Attractions, Colorado, Mountain, Travel, USA, West

Before we paid our admission to the Dinosaur Resource Center, I grilled the poor employee about what makes this museum different from other dinosaur museums. He told me that this is the only dinosaur museum in the world that includes fish and marine reptile fossils (aka the T-Rex of the sea) in their exhibits, and that you can also observe a working fossil laboratory; that many of the specimens we’ve seen elsewhere have been processed and sent out from this location. He also added that the things they had in their museum were real, unlike the other tourist attractions in the area (Zing! And yet we still ended up getting suckered into a few of them.).

The Oviraptor, or “chicken from hell”–you certainly didn’t see it here first, but you DID see it here, and the owner of the museum was actually brought in to collect, prepare, and restore the original find. Another selling point for the museum.

This wall mount has the goofiest expression of any I’ve ever seen. It looks like he’s taking the ANGRIEST poop. Why don’t they sell replicas of this in the gift shop? I’d have bought one in a heartbeat, and mounted it directly opposite the toilet so guests to my home could compete in a poop-off. I can’t believe the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center is crushing my dreams like that.

Is there a rule that all dinosaur art must have lightning or volcanoes in the background? Dinosaurs aren’t an exciting subject, so you need to jazz up the background a little?

The employee failed to mention that the fossil workers they had on site were BEAVERS with punny names. Oh, and that the beavers had the day off because there was no fossil lab work going on that I could see. Jason had to fill in as best he could.

“I’m flying, Jack!”

The employee could have saved himself a lot of breath by uttering the three magic words: “baby mammoth mummy”. SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!