Denver
June 30, Friday: Lyons, CO to Golden, CO
We drove one hour south to Golden, home of Coors brewery and a suburb of Denver. We had made reservations at an RV park that turned out to be a disaster – side by side, jam-packed RVs with lots of concrete right next to a major highway. We parked the RV and found out they had a waterline break, so we had no water. We decided to look over another RV park operated by the town’s park commission. Although it was really a nice park, it didn’t take reservations in advance, but we found out that they will allow a same-day reservation. We’ll try to find a space there tomorrow.
After looking the in-town campground over, we drove around the little downtown, shopped for groceries, and ate lunch. Although it was getting late, we decided to try and get on one of the tours offered by the Coors brewery. Although the place was packed with people, we were able to get on a tour before they closed. It was really interesting to see how they make and bottle the beer, but the best part was the beer tasting at the end!
July 1, Saturday: Golden, CO
We called the Golden town RV park a few minutes before 7am and asked for a site. We had to wait for them to call us back to see if a site opened open and luckily, one did. The site we got was on the middle island section, which was fine, but we really wanted to have a site right on the river, so we asked for the next available river site.
After settling in our new campground, we drove up to Lookout Mountain and Buffalo Bill’s museum and grave. The museum was small, but was really interesting with lots of memorabilia, including a reference to Buffalo Bill's regularly visiting Elmira.
After returning to the RV to clean up, we drove ½ hour to downtown Denver. First, we stopped at the historically famous Brown Palace hotel for a very expensive drink, but the ambience was worth it. The lobby was gorgeous with a stained glass ceiling and had a wonderful piano player.
After relaxing at the Brown Palace, we walked up to the Broker restaurant. The Denver Broker restaurant is in the basement of an old bank and part of the restaurant is the original round bank vault. Jack knew nothing about the restaurant, so he was really surprised to find himself eating dinner inside the vault! Our private table was a mahogany red leather booth inside a room paneled in cherry wood. Jack explained that this would have been one of the rooms where people would open their deposit boxes. The light over the table was two cut-glass bowls. The food was outrageously expensive, but the atmosphere was great, the filet was terrific, and I enjoyed the huge bowl of shrimp for two all by myself!
July 2, Sunday: Golden, CO
S
ince we wanted to get the site on the river (you can see the river from our bedroom windows), we couldn’t leave as early as we wanted for the long drive to Vail and Leadville that we had planned for today. Happily, we did get a river site where we could watch the kayakers practice their maneuvers, but that meant we didn’t get on the road till 10:30.
We drove west through dramatic Elk Creek Canyon to I70. The canyon has high stone walls with a fast-moving river at the bottom and the road twists and turns next to the river. This is the same river that is in the campground, but this is turbulent and dramatic caompred the relatively tranquil portion at our campground.
We stopped at an old mountain mining town called Georgetown. It has reinvented itself with lots of art galleries and unique shops. Jack bought a hand-blown glass hummingbird feeder in one of the shops.
We returned to I70 and drove through the Eisenhower tunnel and stopped at Vail. The signs indicated that downtown parking was full, so we had to park out at Vail Village next to the interstate and take a shuttle.
We first stopped at the small, but beautiful Betty Ford Alpine gardens and walked around, taking lots of pictures. We hopped back on the shuttle to Vail and walked around, but there wasn’t much there. The town is mostly condos and one long street of shops. 
We did take the tram that parallels the ski lifts up to the top of the mountain and we walked around a little, but it started raining and it was cold – not a good combination for me. 
Back down in Vail, we caught the shuttle back to the car and headed southwest to Leadville, an historically significant mining town. Unfortunately, we arrived in Leadville a few minutes too late to tour the museums that were the only reasons for our visit. We were disappointed, and decided to drown our sorrows with ice cream in a small shop in Leadville and headed home. It was a long day of driving and hardly any rewards for us tourists as the scenic views were blocked by the cloudy weather, Vail was disappointing and we were too late for Leadville (sigh).
July 3, Monday: Golden, CO
After yesterday’s long day of driving, we decided to stay local and went to the Cherry Creek fine arts and crafts street festival in Denver. There were lots of beautiful paintings and crafts, but the things we liked were way out of our price range. Our favorite part of the festival was the valet parking tent for bicycles – seriously! 
After walking for what seemed like miles at the street festival, we headed up to the Horticultural Gardens. The Gardens are huge (yup – lots more walking!) and were gorgeous. 
We managed to walk around the entire facility and see all the different gardens and get back to the car just as a major cloudburst let loose.
It was still pouring fifteen minutes later when we stopped at the Colorado Capitol building in downtown Denver. We got soaked running across the street from our parking spot to the building in the rain, even though we had umbrellas. The Capitol was very impressive as it is modeled after the National Capitol building – it was also similar to the Texas Capitol. We missed the last guided tour, but roamed around on our own admiring the stone work, the brass railings and the woodwork.
July 4, Tuesday: Golden, CO
Happy 4th of July! This morning we did some grocery shopping and took a leisurely drive through the mountains over the Peak to Peak highway up to Linnie’s. We first drove through the small mountain town of Black Hawk and it turned out to be nothing but a few brand new casinos. The next town was Central City, another historical mining town, where I wanted to tour the opera house. We missed the tour by a few minutes and didn’t have time to wait till the next one. We walked around town a little, but all the little downtown shops had been converted to nasty little casinos. We headed up the Peak to Peak Highway and toured the lower half of this scenic road as we had already done the northern part from Lyons. We headed down to Longmont from the Peak to Peak through Ward – a strange little town that inspired feelings of “Deliverance”. Driving down the steep dirt road into the “town” we saw a shirtless middle aged guy running down the street, while keeping a hula hoop spinning. He stopped in the middle of the road to speak with a middle aged woman – also doing the hula hoop. We pulled up next to them and they totally ignored us, talking and hula hoping. After a minute or so, they stopped talking, but continued hula hoping, so we asked them whether we were on the right road to Longmont. They very politely gave us directions – all the while both continuing to hula hoop. We still laugh and shake our heads at that one.
Even with their directions, we ended up making a wrong turn into the town of Jamestown where they were having a heck of a big 4th of July party – the entire town was at the park! We eventually made it to Linnie’s for a great cookout with her friends and Keith’s family. Then we went out to Keith’s hanger at the airport to watch the fireworks. The kids (including the big ones) set off liter Cokes with Mentos mints, making quite a show and a new experience for us.
July 5, Wednesday: Golden, CO
The weather isn’t cooperating as it is cloudy and looks like rain. We scrapped plans to drive from Idaho Springs to the top of Mt. Evans and decided to stay close to home and go to the dinosaur area on the Hogback Road and the Red Rocks Park instead.
The Red Rocks Park is a major outdoor concert venue surrounded by – duh, Red Rocks! I had seen the band, Chicago, years ago, and I was hoping that Jack and I could experience a concert here together. We both loved Red Rocks – unfortunately, we had no interest in the scheduled concert of the Goo Goo Dolls. 
After Red Rocks, we ran around to three different places in the Denver area trying to find a replacement switch for the bath sink area in the RV, but no luck. We did get a few things we needed, but it was a nice, slower paced day.
July 6, Thursday: Golden, CO
A down day - rained all day. Read, relaxed, played games, and napped.
