Monday, March 28, 2005

05-18 Denver Colorado

Denver, Colorado

Week 18 of 52
July 30-2 (Tuesday)

A weekend in the City. After arriving in the City on Friday afternoon, I set up at the Cherry Creek State park. I didn’t feel like getting back into traffic right away so just stayed at the campground for the rest of the day.

I met up with Martha Hammond an Escapees camping club member in the morning for coffee and cinnamon rolls at my place. Martha has had a varied life with being married, divorced and now leading a single life. But she has a love of camping and is ready to begin an adventure alone on the road.

You know we can all get there if the desire is strong. As Martha has already found out, there are support groups and many camping groups that will fit her needs. Loners club, a single women’s camping group and many others. She was saying how she wasn’t sure what or where she would travel, and before you knew it, she had plans that take her all the way into next year. So she’s going to be traveling down that road of adventure. Go girl.

I did get into downtown Denver, but didn’t really see too much of the city. Couldn’t get into the US Mint (you need to get your tickets around 7 am to be able to get in) and the fine arts museum was closed on Mondays. Sometimes, things just aren’t meant to be.

On the way back to the campground, I saw a great display of fireworks right at the reservoir. Nice welcome back to the campground. Many cars were parked on the side of the highway to watch the fireworks. By the way, Hwy I-25 is really under major construction. Yuk!

Alright, I went shopping too. About ten minutes from the campground is a really nice mall, called Aurora mall. Since I’ve been staying at a lot of places that are pretty much out in the boonies, it’s nice to have a shopping experience once and a while. Did lunch at Chili’s. Then did a bit of shopping. Bought a nice jade plant and pot, and a few miscellaneous items I needed for the camper.

Touring:

Idaho Springs. I decided to get away from the city and head back to the Rockies to Idaho Springs. Along the way I was searching for the Clamshell house. It was the original home in the Woody Allen Movie, “Sleeper”. I’ve always loved architecture, and this home designed by Charles Deaton in 1963 is the premier modernism home. It sits almost on top of a mountain at 7,500 sq ft in size, in the area called Genesee. Even though I couldn’t get very close to the house, I did view it from many different viewing points from below. Oh, it’s for sale if your interested…. About 10 million dollars.

Then onto Idaho Springs. It’s another one of those neat towns that started out as a gold rush mining town and is now a wonderful tourist town with a couple great restaurants, gift shops, mining tours and hot springs. I didn’t have time to get to the hot springs, but I did get to the gold mine.

I settled for a tour of the Phoenix Gold mine. A barely surviving working family owned gold mine. Now that was a mouth full. I really learned quite a bit about mining for gold including what it costs to extract the gold from the other metals and rock that it’s embedded in. The tour guide was a crusty old miner that was wearing a shirt that said, “Stupidity, it should really hurt”. And talk about someone who knew mining… very knowledgeable.

Back into town I had lunch at Beau Jo’s a great place to get Colorado style pizza. I had the ranch chicken, tomatoes, bacon and Monterey jack cheese.

On the way back to Denver, I stopped by the Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave… Not a particularly exciting museum, but still it adds to what the area represents as a whole.

I’m heading into a state forest for a couple of days of primitive camping, so I probably won’t have that much to report on. If I do, I’ll amend this report.

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