Saturday, September 1 seemed like a good day to visit the local Strasburg museum. Unfortunately, the museum’s last day for the year was August 31. I would think they would want to capture the Labor Day weekend traffic. Then again, the people who operate the museum may have needed a vacation after their summer work and before they settled into their fall and winter activities.

Although we could not go inside the buildings, we wandered around the place reading the signage and looking at the outside displays. I even managed to take a few photos through windows.

Still itching to spend some time in a museum, we drove to Limon, Colorado. There wasn’t much to see on Interstate 70 between Strasburg and Limon except the Great Plains. Miles and miles of wheat, corn, and hay fields dominated the land to the horizon and windmill farms covered the small hills that rise above the grasslands.

It was a slow day when we arrived in town. Although we could see that businesses occupied some storefronts, many of the buildings sat empty. No cars lined the streets making us think we had landed in the Twilight Zone.

Our greeting by a docent at the Limon Heritage Museum train depot eased our fears of having landed in another dimension. The docent explained that Limon was once a hub for freight and travelers. When the interstate was built, the town began its slow death. “No one wants to live in Limon anymore,” she said, although she seemed happy to live there.

An F3 tornado tore through the city in 1990 destroying most of the downtown business district. Due to the brick construction, the depot still stands today even though the tornado tipped several train cars on their sides. The docent also gave us a brief history of the depot and invited us to look around inside and view the train cars outside.

Besides the depot, a warehouse type building houses artifacts and other exhibits. Sunflowers and other bee and hummingbird attracting plants filled the garden in front of the building. I’d love to have such a colorful plot in our yard. It would be my little contribution to improve the environment by providing a place for bees, hummingbirds, and maybe a few butterflies to rest and gather their fill of pollen. Somehow, I believe all the effort to establish such a place would fall to ruin when we are traveling.

For a town with a population of fewer than 2,000 people, we found the museum well organized and the artifacts presented professionally and recommend anyone traveling on Interstate 70 to make Limon, Colorado, a stop on your route. They are open 7 days a week between Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day weekend from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Sundays.

We drove around town, including the residential areas, before leaving town. Most of the homes showed pride of ownership in their well-kept yards, fresh paint, and newish roofs. That was a switch from some of the little towns we’ve seen. I wondered if the residents are happy with the situation preferring the rural atmosphere, or if they preferred more restaurants, shops, galleries and such to move in as an attraction for tourists to visit. If the museum had still been open, I would have gone back and asked the women at the museum.

I’m glad we took the time to drive out to Limon. We learned more history of the railroad and the town at the center of the crossroads for freight and travelers passing through. The roads that intersect the town include Interstate 70, U.S. Highways 24, 40, and 287, and State Highways 71 and 94.

Next up, we move to Colorado Springs for six days, checking in at an RV park near Garden of the Gods.

Safe Travels