Denver, Colorado

Denver is definately a place that Paul and I could live, if we could just ignore the winters they get here! There is so much to do in this area, both outdoors and indoors. 

   We explored the downtown area a little bit and were impressed with the importance the people of Denver place on fitness and the outdoors, even in the middle of the city.  Bicycle riders are prevalent,  and there are parks and open spaces everywhere you turn.  REI's flagship store is in the city, so we checked it out but were disappointed with the variety of merchandise.
Our first full day here, we headed to Estes Park, a small town on the outskirts of Rocky Mountain National Park.  We started at the Stanley Hotel, built by F.O Stanley, of Stanley Steamer fame.  The hotel was built over 100 years ago, and is reportedly haunted by more than one ghost.  There are even "pictures" of the ghosts shown on a TV screen.  Stephen King was impressed enough to use the hotel for his movie "The Shining".  Honestly we didn't stay too long (Paul has actually stayed in the hotel before) since neither of us are Stephen King fans, and  didn't want to take the ghost tour. 
    From there we went up the tram to the top of Prospect Mountain, where we had our picnic lunch and watched kids feed the chipmonks too many nuts.  We had a great view of the town and surrounding mountains while we ate.

    Once we were down again, we headed to Rocky Mountain National Park to drive Trail Ridge Road-the highest paved road in the country.  Its about 50 miles from the beginning to the end. This road climbs in elevation to about 12,000 feet, which is above the treeline, through the Alpine tundra, with beautiful views of the mountains along the way.  I know, I sound like a brochure. Anyway, driving along this road was a great introduction to the Park.  I wasn't crazy about the altitude, and some of the curves were interesting, to say the least, but not so bad that I couldn't enjoy it. It was much cooler and windier along the top, so much so that we didn't get out of the car much. Plus, at that altitude, just walking required a fair amount of effort. Once we came down off ridge, the road came down into a meadow area and thats where we saw quite a few elk and even a solitary moose! I didn't get a great picture of the moose, since they are very reclusive and he ran away.  We saw him again later, but he was laying down in a thicket. But- at least I got to see a moose!  We saw an elk cow and calf, and several bull elk lounging around in the meadow.  Every time we saw a couple of cars pulled over, we'd stop and look and sure enough there would be elk or something in the meadow.  On the way back to Estes Park we saw a herd of Bighorn Sheep- Paul couldn't pull over at that spot, so I took a picture as we drove by.  Estes Park has a River Walk, with shopping and restaurants, so we walked around for a bit before stopping for dinner on the river.
    This morning we headed to Golden, CO, home of Coors beer. We had heard that they have a great tour of the facility, and they really do.  They give you an audio guide - if you want to hear about what you are seeing, as you do a self guided tour, you press a button and it gives information about each stop on the tour.  Each adult is also allowed to taste 3 different beers- and by taste, I mean drink a full glass of it.  Paul is not fond of beer, so he only tried a little of two different ones, and I did two others, so we got to try 4 without having to stagger out of the place. Everyone is limited to one tour per day which seems to make sense since the two people ahead of us in line were well known to the employee. Apparently they come to the tour pretty often.
Golden also has an extensive Museum of Geology and since Paul is very interested in Geology, we spent a couple of hours exploring the museum. It was reasonably interesting seeing all the rocks and gemstones and where they came from.
We drove back to our RV by way of a scenic drive that took us past the gravesite of Buffalo Bill (Cody).  There is a museum at the spot too, but it wasn't free and we weren't that interested, so we just looked around and kept going.  We did drive by the herd of buffalo that roam a nearby park. There were a lot of calves in the meadow- you can tell its spring here because we've seen a lot of baby animals.