The Mile High City
Trip Start
Jan 08, 2007
1
110
158
Trip End
Dec 29, 2009
Denver,
Colorado,
United States
Monday, May 11, 2009
My mom and I made it to downtown Denver in the early afternoon. I really wanted to go the mountaineering museum and the art museum but they were both closed on Monday! The only one open was the Natural History museum...so we went there. It was interesting to learn about the history of Colorado, even with dozens of kids on field trips running around.
After the museum we went and looked at the State Capitol building
Downtown Denver
. There is a step that exactly a mile high, since Denver is know as "the Mile High City." We heard about the United States mint in Denver, where they make US coins, so we went to check that out. He said the next open tour was about a month away! Yeah that's not going work, since we only had a couple hours. Keep that in mind you have to book way ahead if anyone wants to go there. Downtown was cool and I like Denver, although I envisioned it to be more like Salt Lake City with the mountains around. It was actually pretty flat there, the mountain towns are awesome but they are kinda far away from Denver. It would probably take an hour or so to get to most major ski resorts. I always wanted to go to college in Colorado - namely the University of Colorado at Boulder - but unless you live in a ski town you are pretty far away from ski resorts. I like that at the University of Utah I'm a half hour away from many different ski resorts, and there isn't much traffic as well. And I don't need 4 wheel drive to go where I snowboard, which is Park City. Anyway that's just something I found interesting from my experience there. A ski town in Colorado would be amazing though, and I love the mountains and the beauty of Colorado.
A good example of that beauty is the hike we went on before heading home. It's called Hanging Lake near Glenwood Springs. It's a 3 mile round trip hike. The lake and waterfall was absolutely beautiful. The water was so clear, clean, and green. I would have loved to see it in the sunlight I'm sure it's gorgeous, I could definitely go back and see it again sometime. There's this long log in the water, but fairly narrow, and this guy went walking on it to almost the middle of the lake with his $2000+ dollar camera! It was definitely nicer than mine, a Canon Mark something..
Colorado State Capitol Building
. Anyway pretty insane! I think to be a good photographer you have to be creative and get out there for those unique shots, although I'm not sure I would go that far risking all my stuff, so props to that guy! After hiking to the lake my mom and I went to eat at an Italian Restaurant in Glenwood Springs. Glenwood Springs is an awesome town, as are many of the mountain towns in Colorado. I just love Colorado so much, definitely one of my favorite US states if not the favorite (I haven't seen them all to compare it to), and somewhere I'd consider living one day, at least for a short while. So many people involved in the outdoors - the ski resorts, the kayaking, the mountain biking...love it! Pepole seem to be more environmentally conscious, you see more Subarus and small SUVs rather than huge trucks you often see in other states. That's not representative of the state as a whole nor as other states as a whole but definitely parts, just great atmosphere. I will be back!
