For a couple years i’ve been trying to get a trip down to Alamosa for Rails and Ales. Basically a long drive, for a train ride to the middle of nowhere, for beer, enh food, and hill billy music! Sounds fab, eh? I thought so! And it was!!! Can’t wait to do it again!

Basically every year we don’t know when WWDC (the big apple event) will be until april. Sadly sometimes this event can sell out prior to that. This year, it did not, and WWDC was earlier than normal! Woot!

We had enough miles to stay at the newish Farfield Inn, so that was a bonus.

Sadly, work made it so leaving early was a no go, so we had to leave at 4ish… that put us into town, tired, and close to 9. Ugh.

The next morning was the main event – see my blog post on that here.

I had a fabulous time, perhaps due to my expectations being pretty low – beer, nowhere, train… so i received all 3 of those and more! Like i said, can’t wait to go again next year!

We got back to town close to 6pm, chowed on some delicious thai food and then tried to stay awake long enough to go to bed like grownups… Y’know… 9pm.

I feel we had enough water so the next day was not too terrible (i even got in a good workout at the gym) and i could convince the hubby to take some crazy side trips on our way home!

First up was Gator Land – i mean seriously – how could you not? Gators/Colorado – they don’t really go, so we had to stop to see how they did. Bonus points – the hotel had a brochure with a coupon for a bucket of free gator food! OMG-  yes! Thank you road side america for showing me this gem and my hairdresser for going there years prior!

There is a cute history on this place – it used to be a tilapia farm and they got a couple gators to clean up the dead fish etc…  this lead to people breaking in, to see them and due to the warm thermal water the growth rate was crazy! Then lots of people would just drop off exotic animals for them to take care of, so you have gator land!

 

Definitely was a hoot to see all the gators and their stories and all the other random animals wandering around!

You do get to hold a gator – a baby one – upon entry – for their “head count” – we declined… but were able to get our photo with the helper fella… we did not pay for any of those photos… (Use your imagination – john pushing me closer, me leaning back…)

It was kinda hard to use up all the bucket of gator food… some were not that interested, some just had too many people also tossing food their way. But i am not sad i had it, but, be warned – we smelled like that stuff for the rest of the day, no matter how many times we washed our hands!

We did spend an inordinate amount of time at the last tub which was all turtles and baby gators. So fun to watch them all!

Next up on our adventure was the UFO viewing platform… cause… why not…

Notice a significant lack of another person in these photos?

Definitely worth a drop in! Walk the crazy vortex area just to view things people have left if not try and feel some energy!

And the viewing platform – such a great place to view the valley and the dunes! Next nightime event (halley’s comet comes back soon right?), i think we might need to get a camp sit and enjoy the views after dark

 

  

Worth the $2 per person donation! And i picked up a cute pin to keep on my hiking backpack!

After that is was a meandering route home with a stop at one of the breweries we found over the weekend in Salida! Coconut Milk Stout – omg – like ice cream in your mouth – but beer…

Awesome weekend with the hubby doing crazy things!