Rocky Mountain High

STATE VISITED: Colorado

You've gotta love a city that's as pedestrian-friendly as Denver. The city fathers here have really figured out the transit alternatives -- light rail, buses, a free shuttle that crosses downtown continually along pedestrianized 16th Street. There are bikes everywhere, too. I gather that Denver's downtown used to be sketchy, but now you walk around and there's shops and cafes lined up, blocks between the skyscrapers turned into neat public parks, and warehouses on the edges of downtown converted to condos and lofts. Somebody is clearly doing something right.

We walked first from our hotel to the state capitol, with its tall gold-skinned dome. We were told that if you stand on the thirteenth step leading up to the capital, you'll be exactly one mile above sea level. Unfortunately, there was some sort of bill-signing ceremony taking place right on the thirteenth step, so we couldn't check it out for ourselves.



Those pioneer trails we learned about back in Independence? One route, called the Smoky Ridge Trail, ended right here in Denver, an end point for both of the big stagecoach companies of the time, Butterfield and Wells Fargo. This fountain near the capitol marks where that stagecoach terminus once stood. I love the statue of the gun-toting stagecoach guard on top.

The guy who founded Denver, a General Larimer, did the shrewd political thing and named the city after the then territorial governor, who was called Denver. But the general couldn't resist naming the main commercial street after himself. During Denver's mining heyday in the 1870s and 1880s, Larimer Street was where all the action in Denver was. When the silver market went bust in 1893, however, this silver-mining boom city became a bust city, and Larimer Street turned into a notorious skid row.


Then, a few years ago, urban renaissance targeted Larimer Street, and the decrepit old buildings were all spiffed up. Now they've got Starbucks, cutesy shops, and cafes in them. I guess those cables strung over the street (the historic bit is only a block long) are strings of lights at night, which may be an enchanting effect. In the daylight, though, it looks more like some kind of aviary at a zoo.




I do like Denver's 19th-century architecture though -- the round arches, the big blocks of stone, the little neoclassical cornices and borders. Maybe it's because Denver's boom ended so abruptly that these turn-of-the-century gems didn't get knocked down. This is a cool one we saw -- the name (if you can read the carved stone plaque over the doorway) is the Ghost Building.

In other cities you have stone lions guarding the steps of the main courthouse; in Denver, it's bighorn sheep perched there. I wouldn't mess with them.


Denver feels to me a lot like Seattle -- the same kind of progressive, no-nonsense vibe. Okay, so it's got mountains instead of Puget Sound, and it doesn't have the Space Needle or Pike Place Market. (Significant losses, there.) Still, it has a great city personality.

While we were walking around downtown, we discovered this great walkway / bike path running along a rushing creek, sunken below street level. They keep the speeding bikes and skaters on one side and walkers and joggers on the other, so you don't get run down. On a hot day like today, it was great to be strolling next to the water, hidden away from the traffic.






In the afternoon we drove out to Boulder, which is only about a half hour northeast of the city, snuggled even closer to the mountains. Boulder is the sort of big college town where I'd bet people never leave, even after they graduate. Why would anyone leave? It's full of bookstores and cafes and record shops and trendy clothing boutiques; the west end of town has block after block of handsome Queen Anne-style houses with broad front porches and enormous shade trees.


Two completely idiosyncratic landmarks we had to find in Denver: Jax Fish House (left), where some guy named Hosea who was Hugh's favorite Top Chef contestant cooks; and this anonymous looking tech-park office on the outskirts where some cycle wizard is supposedly building a super-customized bike for Bob. If it ever gets finished.

Then back to town for the Rockies game! Coors Field really impressed us; it's got that retro thing going (I love these downtown stadiums where people can walk to the game), but inside it's roomy and nicely open to the mountain breezes.















The obligatory fountains in the outfield . . . .


... and the Rockies mascot. I think it's a stegosaurus. How that is connected to the Rockies, I have no idea, but the little kids loved him. Probably because he reminds them of Barney. (Is Barney still on TV?)

This was probably the best game we've seen so far. It was tied 4-4 from the fourth inning on, but there were lots of hits, so victory always seemed to be in the balance. Plenty of pitching changes, pinch hitters -- all sorts of unpredictable elements. The crowd was noisy and friendly; there weren't a lot of fans from the opposing team, the Washington Nationals -- too far away -- so everyone could afford to be genial.

The Rockies finally squeaked out a run in the bottom of the eighth, and their closer managed to wrap things up in the top of the ninth. The bizarre thing was that the win was credited to a relief pitcher, Alan Embree, who came in briefly in the 8th. Just after he took the mound, the Nationals runner on first tried to steal, and Embree whirled around and caught him out, ending the inning. In the next inning, the Rockies scored the winning run, when Embree was still technically the pitcher, so he got credited with the win. But when the Rockies next took the field, Embree was replaced -- he never actually threw a single pitch. How often does that happen, that the winning pitcher didn't throw a pitch? You gotta love the wackiness of baseball.

We're Not In Kansas Anymore

STATES VISITED: Missouri /Kansas / Colorado

Today was our biggest mileage push, barreling across the whole of Kansas and a goodly portion of Colorado – over 600 miles in one day. We figured there were fewer attractions to see in Kansas, so we might as well just drive like a batmobile out of hell.

Naturally, once we got going, we discovered that I-70 through Kansas offers non-stop tourist action. The Legendary Dorothy House, in Liberal KS! The Steinberg Natural History Museum in Hays KS! The hometown of Wild West sharpshooter Annie Oakley in (you guessed it) Oakley KS! The world’s largest prairie dog town in Grainfield KS! The Prairie Museum in Colby KS! And, only a hundred miles or so off the road, Castle Rock, the Pioneer Museum (in Nebraska, actually, but so long as you’re in the area), and the world-famous Rock City in Minneapolis, KS, which used to be advertised in huge yellow letters on the roofs of barns all over the Midwest (those that weren’t already advertising Mammoth Cave or Mail Pouch Tobacco). Alas, we had no time for any of it.

On the other hand, the landscape was worth the whole trip. First, between Manhattan and Salina, we rolled through the Flint Hills, a luminous rolling panorama of rounded hilltops and wooded hollows and outcrops of gray stone, in spots almost reminiscent of Ireland. The soil here is too thin and rocky for much agriculture, so a fair bit remains of the original tallgrass prairie that used to blanket this part of the world. The grass grows taller here because eastern Kansas isn’t as dry as western Kansas, and it’s a rich mix of blue stem and other grasses sprinkled with wildflowers. It was still too early in the season for the really tall growth – five or six feet high – but beautiful nonetheless.

We stopped for lunch at a Dairy Queen in Abilene, home of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Not surprisingly, after yesterday’s Truman marathon, the kids refused to visit the Eisenhower site. Oh, well, another opportunity squandered.

By the way, notice that yellow emblem on the road signs. It’s supposed to be a sunflower – Kansas is known as the Sunflower State. After the beehive on Utah road signs, this is now my next favorite state highway emblem.

The terrain became much flatter west of Salina. The only trees we could see were planted in a dense cluster around the farmhouses – otherwise it’s just a horizon-wide sweep of high plains. Crops stretched out on either hand – first soybeans on the right and wheat on the left, then changing to wheat on the left and soybeans on the right, the soybeans sparkling in intense green, the wheat a plush carpet of dry gold.

There wasn’t as much corn as I had expected, though -- so much for “I’m as corny as Kansas in August.” Maybe it’s just too dry for corn. Wherever we saw corn, I also noticed these spidery steel irrigation contraptions.

Houses are few and far between out here. Every once in a while, you'll see something mirage-like shimmering on the horizon that looks like a cluster of condo towers, but it turns out to be a huge complex of silos and grain elevators. It made me think of the scene in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy and her friends see the Emerald City towering in the distance -- I wonder if L. Frank Baum had this in mind?

Another thing I noticed, agriculture-wise -- instead of those spotted herds of dairy cows like we have back east, the cows here were mostly these brawny black cattle. Black Angus? Some kind of beef cattle, for sure. I suppose this is the part of their lives where they get to frolic free before they get shipped off to some hellhole of a feedlot. (See, I've been reading my Michael Pollan.)

Given the wide open spaces, I guess it’s not surprising that we’d roll through a few miles of land that have been converted to a new high-tech wind farm.

If you look close, down to the right you’ll see an old-fashioned prairie windmill, like something out of Shane or High Plains Drifter, dwarfed by those gleaming steel blades of the new giants. (Props to Hugh for getting this all in one shot.)

Past the wind farm, we also saw a few farms with a number of little oil wells pumping away amidst the soybeans. The heads of these pumps remind me of the cartoon crows Heckle and Jekyll, dipping their beaks rhythmically up and down.

At long last we crossed the line into a new time zone – the evocatively named Mountain Time – and soon after crossed the border into Colorado. We thought we'd see mountains right away -- HA! No, just more high plains, though it did get a little more hilly, with tufts of silvery sagebrush cropping up in the grassy margins along the road.

And hey -- guess what the speed limit is here? TAKE THAT YOU CONNECTICUT WIMPS!! Needless to say, everybody still drives at 10 miles over the speed limit.

Then the real drama of the drive began -- we drove right into a violent thunderstorm. We could spot it several miles ahead across the plains -- really dramatic. It lasted for about 20 intense minutes, then we could see the blue skies ahead, and we got our first glimpse of the Rockies in the distance. (You can't see it in these pictures, though.) Here's the sequence:

Traffic in Denver was abysmal -- there had been a six-car pile-up on I-70 east of downtown, and we got caught in the standstill traffic. By the time we pulled into the Grand Hyatt, we were thoroughly exhausted from our long day's journey into night. Which meant just one thing -- room service dinner!! YAY!!!!!