During our Colorado vacation we stayed at Cheyenne Mountain Resort, home of multiple swimming pools, (some of which were flooded during our visit), a private lake, (well, we drove by it), four restaurants, (we had room service, but you couldn't get a baked potato for dinner?), and championship golf, (only the Boy plays.)
Now, I'm not complaining. The rooms are nice. The internet is wireless, (though not free.) We'd recommend it, or stay there ourselves again. It's just that you only have so much time in a week and we were mostly out touring caves, gold mines, rafting, (though female dictators don't row - they hire man-servants), and let's not forget my wonderful experience at Pike's Peak.
As the name implies, the view off our balcony was Cheyenne Mountain, the real life location of NORAD, the U.S. Northern Command, and other various cool military alphabet bearing type agencies, entrenched in the granite and self-sustaining for 800 people up to 30 days after they close the blast doors.
If that wasn't cool enough by itself, SciFi fans are familiar with Cheyenne mountain as the fictional home of the Stargate, used by Jack, Sam, Daniel, and Teal'c to travel to other planets, defending the earth against alien enemies, whose names can apparently be pronounced in a multitude of ways, (Gould, Goo-A-Ould, etc.)
For the men in our party, (that would be the PiC and the Boy), the mere presence of the mountain was like dangling honey in the front of Poo Bear, like offering a pork project to Congress, like an open bar to the Fraters, like other Lilekesque analogies that I'm not nearly talented enough to come up with, with the basic idea being they were drawn to it like flies to flypaper.
I determined that I'd best go along to supervise their planned adventure, to see how close they could get to the fictional home of the Stargate. The exit to Norad Road was marked, "Authorized Vehicles only." I drove by, an action immediately met with the query, "Why did you do that?"
Sensing they would not be easily dissuaded, I turned around, determined to take the exit on our next pass. When we reached the top, we were greeted by this sign:
Thankfully, the phrase, "Use of deadly force is authorized", and the SUV parked just up the road bearing the enforcers of said deadly force, was enough to convince them they'd given this quest their best effort, even if our closest view of the facility was the one from our balcony.
It's easy to understand that you can get to the mountain entrance if you're somebody, like the Denver Bronco Cheerleaders, or Ermey from Mail Call. But, the fact that they let in David Copperfield when we couldn't get past the gate? Cuts like a knife, I tell you.
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