Images of Denver, CO

We were in Denver for quite a few days and the photo set from there is pretty large. (Go to my flickr page to see the whole bunch, if you're interested.) While in Denver we saw the aftermath of the DNC / Obama nomination, I got my first pedicure (surprisingly pleasant!), met up with Colleen after not seeing her since about 1998 or so, stayed at the Hotel Monaco where we had a fish named Speckles, and generally traveled all over the city checking it out. We were very seriously considering a move to Denver, so we wanted to know all about it and it's various neighborhoods. I think we saw quite a bit, check it out:

The CO State Capitol Building:



Art Museum and skyscrapers (there are lots of shiny reflective buildings in downtown Denver).





This was some sort of cool bridge in a fun section of Denver. I took a bunch of shots of it, as you can see...







More skyscrapers and the 16th St Mall, a cool but sort-of-dingy walkable area of the downtown.



Another very cool bridge. The architecture in Denver is fantastic, you can really tell that they've recently had a boom, everything is shiny and postmodern and surprisingly well planned.



Speckles was our pet fish, we had him for a couple days while we stayed at the Hotel Monaco, which is a great hotel if you can swing it.



A killer roof. This shot looks to me like it's HDR, but it isn't at all.



Warning: thin ice! Ha!



One of the highlights of the trip was reconnecting and visiting with old friends. I reconnected with Colleen, who I hadn't seen since about 1998! Her and her boyfriend, Mark, are living it up and lawyerin' it up in Denver. I'm jealous of them, I want mountains, too!

In Denver the day after the Democratic National Convention during which Barack Obama was officially nominated to run for President!

It was Obamania in Denver in the days directly after the DNC! I was definitely digging it, even though we sort of had to detour to Boulder before going to Denver because there were no hotel rooms anywhere in the city during the convention. We watched his nomination speech at a bar in Boulder and everyone was captivated, I think I did actually see some people with wet eyes. Let's hope he actually brings real progressive change to this country, which sorely needs it after 8 years of W.

Images of Boulder, CO

Boulder was gorgeous! We arrived at night and it was pretty cool out, we'd been moving further and further north and further and further up in altitude on our trip and we were really feeling the chill at night in Boulder.

Boulder is a cute town that is well-planned and has a great walkable downtown. It has a major public university, University of Colorado at Boulder, and was full of students and therefore good bars and places to hang out. The city is surrounded by a massive greenbelt full of hiking and biking trails, and of course there are a bunch of beautiful mountains all around Boulder that promise great skiing in the winter.

We went for a long walk through some of that green space:







Those are pine cones on the right.



A big fat bumbler:



Check out those roots:





Most of the pics I have posted from Boulder are from the outdoors, but the downtown is cool, too. That pic of me is from downtown Boulder, as is the theater below. That one of Carson on the rock is from a park.



They sold out a whole theater for Obama's nomination acceptance speech, which I might add, took place on that very night. (We took off for Denver the next day, so we soaked up some of the excitement there, too!)



Before leaving for Denver, we hit up the Celestial Seasonings factory for a tour. It was all worth it just for the "mint room," which was like taking a bath in Vick's Vaporub menthol. It was awesome, most people couldn't even stand being in the room for more than 10 second or so, ha! No photo's were allowed in the factory, so no pics of that.



Sleepy time!

The Drive from Durango to Boulder, CO

I think these "driving" posts are sort of silly, but they help me organize my memories of the trip.

For this drive we opted for the slightly-longer-but-much-easier-on-the-newly-repaired-car path from Durango to Boulder. This way only had one major mountain pass whereas the other option had three and was the path on which the car had popped its coolant system on several days earlier.

I understand that heading through the mountains north of Durango is the prettier drive, but we headed to the east and then north, we got to drive by the Sangre de Cristo mountains, we met a nice chipmunk, drove over Wolf's Creek Pass, and we saw an awesome sunset!



That sunset was wild! In the pic on the right it looks flat, and it was, but if you look at the big version of the shot you'll see the Sangre de Cristo's looming out there on the horizon.



Ho hum just another waterfall here at the top of the Wolf Creek mountain pass.



A bunch of Elk, presumably this is a ranch and they're not just hanging out, but who knows.



He didn't seem rabid or anything, but he was crazy -- he was walking right up to me and practically taking stuff out of my hand (dumb I know, yeah yeah).

Images of Mesa Verde National Park, CO

Mesa Verde is AWESOME!!!! Definitely go there if you're ever in the Four Corners / Durango region. We only did one small trip of many that are offered and it was fantastic.

Welcome to Mesa Verde --



This massive rock greets you as you enter the park:



Sportin' my Stetson from Steamboat, CO, which inexplicably disappeared later on the trip, check out the valley behind me! I was scared driving on the edges of some of these cliffs, I'm not gonna lie...



A gnarled old tree and a bunch of burned trees. They had massive wild fires at Mesa Verde a few years back.



WOW! An ancient Puebloan village built into the cliff! We walked down to it with a guide and were able to go in there and check it out in a respectful manner. That black stuff on the top of the cliff is from fires that the people in the town made over the decades that they lived there.



Me and Carson before heading down to the village site. This hole, built into the ground of the village, is called a Kiva, the ancient Puebloan people performed various rites and rituals in them.



Another shot of the city from above.



A Puebloan skyscraper!



High up and having a blast at Mesa Verde!