A Denver at Leisure

Train's Great Western Adventure Travel Blog Part III-Denver at Leisure

Day 3 –Denver Area at Leisure 6/27/08 Total milage to this point: 1309miles

I awoke early, before my alarm and Emma, at around 6 a.m. to get the whole family ready to go to Scott’s work at FEMA. Scott had invited us to tour his office the night before. Luckily we were spending the night here again so I didn’t have to pack the car this morning. That was probably one of the best things about that day.

We drove over to the Federal complex where we underwent the expected, post 9/11 rigamarole to get on the premises. The security guard asked to see our driver’s licenses and asked us to roll the windows down. I rolled down the back window without thinking and caught the shade in the door. I would have to pull out my knife later to operate on the door when Parker freaked out because I hadn’t listed it as a weapon when the guard asked if I had any weapons in the car.

We finally got to Scott’s building which was really just a big bunker underground and toured his facility. Another checkpoint and metal detector later, we were wandering through the halls of FEMA region VIII which looked a whole lot like C.T.U.

I fully expected Jack Bauer to walk past us and I met their equivalent of Chloe.

I yelled at her, “I need real time satellite imaging over my location downloaded to my palm pilot STAT!” She really didn’t seem to get my brand of humor.

We chatted with Scott and his co-workers where Emma was a big hit and left around 9 a.m. to begin our day in earnest and go get some breakfast at a place Scott recommended, Davies’ Chuckwagon Diner. It looked like one of those diners from the 50’s but served a steak and eggs breakfast for $4.75. It was great. At our booth we planned our day and decided to hit Buffalo Bill’s grave first in Golden, CO which was not far away.

A good hour of driving and stopping later, we stopped momentarily at a park to take in the view and put sunscreen on Emma as it was still pushing 90 degrees today. Two deer were feeding less than 15 feet from us while we took care of our business not caring how much noise we made. We snapped some photos and continued up the mountain to Lookout Point where we saw Buffalo Bill’s grave and gift shop. I hope there isn’t a gift shop near my grave. There was also a museum which only Parker wanted to go through for the low price of $1.00. We were too busy sweating. Someone even collapsed in the parking lot probably from heat exhaustion. They aren’t used to heat up there.

We used the facilities and Parker got a canteen as a souvenir and we took the Lariat Loop scenic road for the view and drove scenic highway 72 up to Estes Park stopping the whole way to take pictures. It was scenic but that caused me to spend the better part of the day driving 25-30 m.p.h. When we got to Rocky Mountain National Park we bought an annual national park pass for $80 and drove straight up the highest mountain in the park. It took forever, but we finally reached the Alpine Visitor’s center and the wind must’ve been blowing 30 m.p.h. We bundled up Emma and attempted to walk the 200 yards to the summit but Jen and Emma had to turn back half way up. It was just getting too cold and she wasn’t properly dressed. We were at 12,000 feet so the temperature had fallen way down. Parker and I descended from the summit to enter the gift shop, bought a Christmas ornament and magnet and snapped a few more photos before heading down the mountain. We saw plenty of Elk and melting snow on the way down. Still no moose.

We drove back via Boulder, CO because we needed to meet Scott and Carmen for supper and we’d already spent most of the day driving. (We ate our lunch at a picnic table entering Roosevelt National Forest btw where we fed the Chipmunks Pringles) Before we got all the way back to Denver, I decided I wanted to see Red Rocks which Jen did not…at first. Later, she would admit it was a pretty neat place. When we arrived, a concert was about to kick off for a band called “widespread panic” so there were literally thousands of cars there and it looked like a modern Woodstock with all the tie-dye shirts and dopeheads. (We did smell a peculiar aroma) We wound up driving through the open areas of the park which was probably for the best because we still had to get to Denver to meet up for supper. We punched in the address into the GPS for Maggiano’s which was recommended by Scott and arrived at 8:45 p.m. We felt a bit underdressed but went in anyways and had a family style dinner with Lasagna, Chicken Parmesan, and Chicken Marsala. It was very filling and very good. We left at around 10:30 pm and got back to the hotel room and packed until midnight, for tomorrow we headed off to Rapid City, SD.

Emma's Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

P.S. This blog fulfills the requirements for #525 and for #914 day, I will attempt 937. Learn the Books of the Bible in order. The next post should tell you if I was successful.