Penrose: You might be surprised at what you find

 Penrose - Something's always in season here.

   It might be tarantulas. It might be apples or fruit of the forbidden variety - sunbathers who plunge naked into the hot springs.

   It's a rural hub where scorpions and horses roam, model rockets are made, backsides sunburn and little ladies in sunbonnets fight over the best blackberries. The town's identity is scattered around its 33-square-mile patchwork of scrub brush, fertile soil and a highway that's the main artery to Fremont County's multiple prisons, where many residents work. Others make the 35-mile drive to Colorado Springs for military jobs.

   "What I tell them to get them to move here is we don't have the vio- lence like big cities and you know your neighbors," said Misty Dawn, Penrose Chamber of Commerce office manager. "We're probably mailing out five to 20 new visitor packets a month."

   The population of Penrose was 4,070 in the 2000 U.S. Census.

   One of the town's icons has seen better days and has been for sale two years.

   Barbed wire keeps the curious at bay from the "World's Largest Rocking Chair," a once popular Highway 115 roadside attraction that now juts from a weed patch.

   Owner Tom Doxey will only sell the chunky 21-foottall chair with the 9.78 acres it sits on. He's dropped the price from $875,000 to $750,000, which includes a brick cannery displaying a colorful mural of when growers came to market their produce.

   Doxey turned it into a pieand-gravy Apple Shed cafe and all fixtures come with the package deal. So far, there have been no takers.

   "I get offers for the chair, happens all the time," he said.

   The chair garnered nationwide kitsch acclaim in books and blogs to the town, which is home to Estes Industries, a household name in mailorder rocket kits.

   Ever so proud, locals made a bumper sticker: "So what if Penrose isn't on the map? Neither is heaven!"

Dare to go bare

   Sunglasses are the main armor protecting bathers at the suits-optional Dakota Hot Springs. Most opt to bare all to play volleyball or step into the geothermal artesian pool of calcium, mineral salts, soda and a trace of sulfur.

   Set back from the road, behind a wooden fence with wide slats, some missing, it looks more like a cluster of rustic tool sheds than a nudist spa.

   "A lot don't realize we are suits-optional, and they say, ‘Oh, my god, there's naked people here,'" manager Toni Shenise said.

   It's been a skinny dipping club for at least 20 years, open year-round to members and anyone with a hankering to swim naked, except on Tuesdays when suits are required. The pool draws between 500 and 800 people a month and has RV and tent camping.

   "Part of the charm, when they walk through the door, who cares who you are or what you do," Shenise said.

   All who enter must abide by the sheet of 15 rules: No glass. No cameras. No horseplay. No touching.

   "Even husband and wife have to keep their distances. Arm's length apart," Shenise said.

   It's a hotbed of water, not hormones. "It's not a hunting quarry," she said.

   Judy Hamilton, an Aurora massage therapist, heads to the Penrose spa several times a year to unwind.

   "My first day here, I wore a suit. The next day I wore shorts. The third day I was like, ‘This is fine, I don't need to be worried about anything,'" she said. "We come in this world naked and taught early on we were supposed to be clothed. It takes a while to get over that. It's not weird."

Down on the farm

   Fancy the thought of clothing optional spreading to other businesses in the region.

   "If they can do, we're going to do it. I'm going to have ‘No clothes at Happy Apple Tuesdays,'" joked Tony Ferrara, owner of Happy Apple Farm.

   He laughs at the prospect of adding blackberry wrestling to the orchard his parents started in 1984.

   The burly former Texas banker gave up pinstripe suits and Armani ties to return to Penrose 10 years ago to run the family's pickyour-own orchard.

   He stayed happy, even when his entire apple crop of 3,000 trees in full bloom succumbed to a late April freeze.

   "I lost all my apples this year," he said. "I got the best crop of blackberries. I got the best pumpkin patch I ever had. Thank god we diversiffed."

   Berry picking is in full swing now and continues through mid-September, when pumpkin season starts, bringing buses of schoolkids to the 40-acre farm.

   Ferrara has warnings of winter's onset - the pitterpatter of feet, eight per furry body.

   It's the march of the tarantulas.

   "About the middle of October, you see them crossing the road," he said. "I know the first freeze is close."

   Scorpions, native to the hard crusty soil, are yearround inhabitants.

   "I've been bitten this year twice," he said. "At night they get into the sink. I was washing dishes and all of a sudden I felt this sting. I drained the water and there was a scorpion and my finger was this big and it hurt so bad."

3 ... 2 ... 1 ... liftoff

   Forty minutes from where the U.S. government scours the skies for high-fiying objects is the low-profile headquarters for a company whose rockets fly under the radar.

   Tiny rockets rocked Penrose decades before the giant rocking chair.

   The town was tagged "Model Rocket Capital of the World" after Estes Industries moved here from Denver in 1961 to expand production of mail-order model rocket kits.

   Estes, a name that evokes childhood memories, has grown up with the times. The plant makes fancy radio control planes and helicopters grown men fly for fun.

   Other than an oversized white model rocket jutting from behind shrubs in front, the unassuming warehouse operation bears no hint of what goes on inside.

   Much like the rest of this town that blurs by those who don't stop to get their feet wet.

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ContaCt the writer: 636-0253 or andrea.brown@ gazette.com