A Day In The Life - 06/27/2011: I Hop, You Hop, to IHOP

 Gaye and I went to breakfast with Q and Jase this morning. Jase was in such a good mood and was very fun to be with. He was a bit on the loud side but it was happy-loud as opposed tot he other kind.

 He ate his food and he and his dad made faces.

And then there is the I-can-hug-harder-than-you contest. I think Jase is winning here.

Oh, yes - the food was pretty good also.

A Day In The Life - 06/25/2011: The Birthday That Wouldn't Die

Our wonderful friends, Doug and Deryn Reed, took Gaye and me to dinner for my birthday. They wanted to do it earlier but I told them that Gaye was out of town for the week and wouldn't be back until the 24th. And if you buy into that one, I have a bridge over the Grand Canyon that is for sale. Applebee's was a great place to have dinner with great people like them. And they even knew our waiter. I figure something was rigged.

A Day In The Life - 06/24/2011: The Last Of The Rocky Mountain High

The last day in Denver. Got to cram more fun into our trip.
So, we are wanting to visit the Denver mint but the schedule has been full for a month. But we hear that they take walk-ins. So we park by the Library/Museum complex and walk the three blocks to check it out. When we get there at 7:30 (a half hour before the first tour) we find that they do take walk ons and give them stand by tickets. Then we learned that you can't take purses, jewelry, food, knives or a million other things with you - and they don't have lockers to store anything in. So we get a stand by ticket for 9:00 AM. We walk back to the car to drop off everything. We have already checked out of our hotel so everything is in the trunk of the car.

 After shedding all of our worldly belongings we start back to the Mint. About half way back, Gaye breaks her sandal. So she sends me back to the car to get her tennis shoes. I am about half way there when I realize that I need to take her sandals with me so that she won't have to carry them around the mint with her. So, back I go. Got the sandals (and instructions to throw them away) and I am once more going back to the car. Got her shoes, got back to her and we got to the mint on time and even managed to be included in the 9:00 AM tour. (The people after us we not so lucky.) They were making pennies and Quarters that day. No samples were given.

 Then it was off to the State capitol. Did you know they fought in the Civil War?
They were having a quilt show in the capitol building and had them hung all around everywhere for three floors. We took the tour. It was very informative about the state. And then you can hike the additional 100 steps from the third floor to the top of the rotunda where you can see the view. By state law, no building can be built so tall that you cannot see the mountains from the top of the capitol building. So the view was really good.

 Gaye sat on the step marked at one mile high. Then we discovered that there are actually three places marked with that distinction because of better methods of measuring altitude. Hope we got the right one.

We had read about this restaurant in Denver that was established with the goal of being able to serve a nutritious hot meal to anyone. You pay what you can afford and if you can't afford anything then you work for your meal. The salad ingredients were mostly grown in the yard behind the place. It was good and so much like the United Order that it was a pleasure to eat there and contribute.


Some how we managed to get back to LIKS Ice Cream Emporium. I think that it was to get a better picture. Yes, I am sure that was what it was. It had absolutely nothing to do with the ice cream, even though we did do another taste test there.

Then we were back at the library. Denver has a bike borrow program where you can borrow a bicycle for a small fee and ride it to another borrower rack and check it in. It works kind of like Red Box.
We still had some time to kill before we needed to head off to the airport so we went to the Larimer street mall. We bought a few souvenirs for people back home and then to the theater to watch Green Lantern.
Finally it was time to head to the air port. Thank you St. Garmin.

A Day In The Life - 06/23/2011: Pike's and Segways

 This has been another day of so much to do that I am glad that we are young and healthy. Today we headed south to Colorado Springs and the Garden of the Gods. We passed the Air Force Academy and watched planes towing gliders into the sky.
We had signed up for the Segway tours. We had done this once before in San Juan, Puerto Rico and it was so much fun that we decided to do it again.

 They always have an orientation period but because most of us had ridden them before (one person even brought his own Segway) it was a fairly short orientation.

This tour was the long one at 2 hours and it sure beat walking, being in a car or on horseback. This was so much fun.

 The rock formations were fascinating as we came over this rise.

 While we were waiting to start this guy just sort of befriended us and was telling us about the park and the things to look for and soon we knew about his family and his favorite movies. He phoned his wife to get the name of the movie so that we could watch it. That was lots of fun. Then he took our picture in front of the figures of the kissing camels by the garden gates.

 Then we headed over to see Pike's Peak, but decided to eat lunch in Manatou Springs at Adam's Mountain Cafe. It is a tree hugger restaraunt with lots of vegan and veggie dishes and not a steak or burger to be found. But the food, again, was excellent.

 We did indeed make it to the top of Pike's Peak. And it was snowing lightly up there. The air is about 50% of the oxygen that is available at the base.

 This is NOT the train that took us to the top. It was just a cool thing for taking pictures on. So I did.

 This was the cool train station.

 This train does not apply the drive power to the wheels but runs it through the cods in the center. A normal train can get traction through the wheels on the rails for a maximum of an 8% grade. A cog train like this one can travel grades up to 26%. The steepest grade that we traveled to Pike's Peak was 25%.

 At the top of the peak was this plaque. It is about a woman, Kathrine Lee Bates, who, after traveling to the top of Pike's Peak and seeing the plains of Kansas to the east with their wheat fields and the mountains to the west, wrote the words to the song, "My Country 'Tis Of Thee".

 This is the view to the west of the mountains. Pike's Peak is one of 54 peaks in Colorado that are over 14,000 feet high but what makes this one special is that it stands alone. The others are in mountain ranges. And it is on the eastern edge of the Rockies so that you can see the plains of Kansas from the top.

This is the view of the plains of Kansas to the east out in the distance with Colorado Springs near the base of the mountains.
The lady providing the information over the loud speakers as we rode the train up mentioned that we did not need to worry about the train failing and crashing because there were two springs at the bottom - Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs (gasp!)

A Day In The Life - 06/22/2011: Denver Silver Mining

 All I can say is that it is a good thing that we are still young and energetic because we did so much stuff today we should be dead . . . at least dead tired.
We started out by driving northwest of Denver about 40 miles to Silver Plume, one of the old silver mining camps. At one time there was a narrow gauge railroad that traveled 50 miles back to Denver to deliver the silver ore from the mine. (I know, we traveled 40 to get there but the train took fifty - actually, 54 miles to haul the ore. That's progress.

Today a section that travels about seven miles to Georgetown Lake (which is only about 2-3 miles by the freeway) has been preserved. And it doubles back on itself and actually travels underneath itself at one point in order to change elevation in steep areas.

At this point it crosses over the gorge, circles down and actually travels underneath where the train is here.

In the middle of the train ride we stopped to take the tour of the Lebanon silver mine. It was very interesting as well as a lot of fun. I kind of like this touristy stuff.

Our tour guide, Faye, recommended if we had time to head about 7 miles further west to the Loveland Pass which is at the continental divide. It is quite different from when we pass the continental divide along I-40 in New MExico and very cold. Glad I brought a jacket.

Then it was off to Beau Jo's Pizza in Idaho Spings on our way back to Denver. It was another recommended place to eat and it was outstanding pizza.

Back in Denver we went to the Denver library which was a really cool place with several floors, and a robotic book return system as well as some fun architecture.

Across the street from the library is the museum and several fun art pieces, like this indescribably piece that could be Mother and Child . . . or Master and Slave . . . or Big and Little-er.

And above the restaurant on the third corne, on the top of the building is this huge sculpture of an Indian sneaking up on a cowboy in his wagon. There are arrows flying through his hat and bullets piercing the feather that is sticking up in the air. This one made me laugh. Can I get one for the house?

Gaye was intrigued with this one where the pieces of paper in the dust pan are about half the size of an adult. It was cool.

After so much fun we found this ice cream store off in a neighborhood called LIKS. It used to be named Lickety Splits. They had some trivia question every day that if you could answer it you got a free scoop of ice cream - like, "How many bats does the National Baseball League purchase every year?" The answer was 4800. We sat outside in the shade of a tree or an umbrella to (quickly) Lik our streaming cones before we got to wear the contents. It was yummy!

A Day In The Life - 06/21/2011: The Adventure Continues

 Gaye decided to take us to Denver for my birthday so we hopped on a plane early in the morning. OK, we arrived at the airport early in the morning and arrived in Denver about noon. But the view of the mountains coming into Denver was spectacular.

 First of we went to the Botanical gardens in downtown Denver. It was really cool. Like this squirrel who really likes M&Ms. In fact, after a couple he decided that he wanted more and started stalking me. I finally had to wrestle him down and throw him in the lake.

 You can probably see the squirrel in the middle of the lake . . . but it sure is a pretty lake.

 Then it is off to the Tattered Cover bookstore, of course. Can't pass up a town that has a good bookstore, you know.

 And there was this cool Starbucks sign.

 Then it was off to Silver Plume to ride the narrow gauge mining train. But it was a lot more like a tourist train which was still a lot of fun as it wound around through the forest crossing raging streams and . . .

 . . . crossing a really tall bridge before circling around and traveling beneath the same bridge.

 And right in the middle of the train ride there is a tour of the silver mine, which was very interesting.

 At the recommendation of the mine tour guide we then drove a few more miles to the top of the continental divide at Loveland pass. It is a lot different than the continental divide in New Mexico.

 On our way back to Denver we stopped for lunch at BeauJo's Mountain Pies. It was great pizza.

 The Denver Library complex holds not only the library in a really funky building but also the art museum in another bizarre structure with really cool statues and art pieces.

 Like this one of a cowboy having a shootout with an Indian. There are arrows flying through the cowboy;s hat and bullets going everywhere - even through the feather. And there is sits as big as life on top of a building where you only see it well from the top of another building. But here it is anyway.

 And there was this huge piece of art work in front of the museum.

Finally we ended our day with a trip to LIKs Ice Cream parlor. It used to be Lickty Split Ice Cream but it got shortened. And it was really great ice cream where you sit out side in the shade of a tree or an umbrella as you lick the quickly melting dribbles from the scoop a-top a cone before you end up wearing it. At least that is the idea.