Back from the Big Apple

It is good to be home and ... there she is, waiting for us in Pike's Peak Shuttle Car Park. Our flight was smooth and direct; only three and a half hours. The most difficult moment is driving out of the car park. How do we pay? But it turns out to be so easy;  $56.00 later - $8.00 a day - we are good to go.

We return to the South Park RV Park where we stayed before we left for New York.  We have a nice site under a large tree with a place to hang our hummingbird feeder.  You never know!! Now we are going to explore Denver. But first -we are in bed by 7pm.

The Denver sky line

We have a rental car booked for tomorrow - Wednesday - but today is a really hot day (over 100 degrees) so we get the bikes off and ride to a local cinema complex. The coolest place on earth I think.

We see the movie '42' which is about Jackie Robinson, one of the first African American baseball players. Harrison Ford also stars. It is really good!! We can certainly recommend it.





We pick up the rental car on Wednesday and drive into the city. There are fires all around Denver particularly in the Black Forest area east of Colorado Springs. They are serious fires and will become the most destructive fires in Colorado history with almost 500 homes destroyed and 2 people killed.


Smoke from the fires blanket  the city; you can smell the smoke; visibility is poor.

Some facts and figures on Denver:

• The main street - 16th Street Mall - is one mile in length;
• The 13th step on the west side of the Colorado State Capitol is 5,280 ft above sea level, one mile high;
• Modelled after the US Capitol in Washington the building has 200 ounces of 24 carat gold on its dome;
• 36 ultra low emission hybrid-electric shuttles operate on 16th Street Mall;
• 200 trees line the Mall and 50,000 flowers are planted each spring;
• Coors Field is home to the Colorado Rockies Major League Baseball team. The row of purple seats is exactly one mile above sea level!

But the star  of the show is the line of jagged snowcapped peaks that you can see in the distance; 120 miles of peaks and more than 200 named peaks can be seen from Denver. Thirty two of those peaks are over 13,000 ft and three are more than 14,000 ft. high.

In Colorado, 683 peaks climb to 13,000 ft and more. There are 54  'Fourteeners' ( peaks that are 14,000 ft and more) in Colorado - the most of any state.

The next day we drive out of town to Georgetown. Now a lively historical summer tourist centre, Georgetown was the historic centre of the mining industry in Colorado during the late nineteenth century when it earned the nickname the 'Silver Queen of Colorado'. There are many preserved structures from the heyday of the Colorado Silver Boom. It is a pretty town in a very picturesque part of the state.

We visited Georgetown in the late 1980's. It 'feels' a little bit the same ....??

Georgetown sits at an elevation of 8,530 feet, more than 3000 feet higher than Denver. It is noticeably cooler too despite the sunny day.
We have lunch at a cafe set outside in an old fashioned garden.





After  lunch we take a road leading higher up into the mountains and are rewarded with superb views out over the valley which is Georgetown.

Georgetown, Colorado

The malting process at the brewery.

About 2 o'clock we head back to Denver. We stop at Golden to visit the Coors Brewery - now the Miller-Coors Brewery. We wait in line with a lot of other people for a free tour of the brewery.We are taken by shuttle bus to the brewery proper where we are given a comprehensive tour of every step of the beer making process.
We end up with free samples which we enjoy at the bar!!

Interesting road signs!

Trevor has made bookings for us with the hairdresser at the RV Park!  For the first time in our lives we both sit down in the same hairdressing salon to get haircuts!  And he pays!! What a first. Now he knows!!!! But I don't need to make it a habit!