National Parks and Canyons

Little Bighorn Special - Archers Direct, May 2010

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DAY 2: Friday 7 May 2010 - Denver, Colorado

The Comfort Inn Downtown Denver does a a pretty good complimentary breakfast - with sausage, bacon, scrambled egg, waffles, toast, muffins, cereal, juice and coffee, you can't complain at that and it makes for a great start to a vacation.

Today we had the choice of a couple of Grayline Bus Tours as optional tours. The Denver City Tour and the Denver Mountain Parks Tour. Di, Paul and I had done them both last year, and Di had business at the Wells Fargo bank across the street, so we sent Dave to do the Denver City Tour without us while we made our own fun. We arranged to catch up with him later on the Parks Tour.

Once we'd been to the bank we headed over to the Denver Capitol Building.
I love that in the USA, once you've been through a little airport-style security you have full, unfettered and unsupervised access to the corridors of power. They do a free tour at the Capitol so we decided to do that again and learnt some new stuff - there could be silver dollars hidden in the basement that no one has yet found, although I guess they've looked pretty hard.

This visit, both the House of Representatives and the Senate were in session so, we were able to see politics and law-making in action. You don't get this kind of access in Westminster, or even your local council house.
We still had some free time before getting the bus, so we looked on the map and saw the Molly Brown House Museum was only a few blocks away. When we got there we were disappointed. The next tour was full and we didn't have time for the one after that. I slipped up on my research on this one - I didn't think we'd have time to sightsee so I hadn't planned this visit. Maybe next time.

At 12.45pm, we were picked up outside the hotel on the Grayline collector bus. This picks up at the local hotels and takes everyone to the ticket office at the Cherry Creek Shopping Center. Even though there's a Build-A-Bear Workshop here, we didn't have time to shop!

We hopped on the bus and, another familiar face! We recognised another driver! This was the same guy that drove us on this tour last year. Okay, so he didn't remember me straight away, but you could tell when light dawned and he asked, “Haven't I seen you before?” Funny, it's a small world, isn’t it? Mind you, I wouldn't want to carpet it.

At least this year it was blue sky sunny weather (it was pouring with rain last year, one day I'll tell you about it!), which was great when we got to our first stop, the Red Rocks Amphitheatre. It's a concert venue, built into the rocks in the 1930s as part of the Civilian Conservation Corps work programme helping to get the US out of Depression.
All the big names have played there, the Beatles, The Police, the Rolling Stones, Madonna, and they tell me the acoustics are phenomenal for such natural surroundings. Sadly, we didn't have time to stay for a show, but not hearing for myself is the only reason I've dropped it a Ted. No one ever said I was fair!

We then made a stop by the side of the highway where there is a tunnel below for the buffalo to cross safely. There were a few buffalo in sight, but they were really too far away for a good photo.

The last stop of this tour was to the Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave on Lookout Mountain. Last time we were were here, we didn't even know there was a view, the weather was so bad, but today, we could see for miles as we headed to the gravesite.

William F "Buffalo Bill" Cody died in 1917 and apparently he didn't have an easy death. At first, the town of Cody, that Bill established during his lifetime, also laid claim to his body, but after a little wrangling and a lot of concrete, Buffalo Bill was laid to rest on Lookout Mountain, Colorado, and after she died four years later, his wife Louisa was buried with him.

The small, but perfectly formed, Buffalo Bill Museum is nearby, and we took another look around. It's not huge, but it is packed with information and memorabilia of Buffalo Bill's very full life. We checked and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show came to Dudley (my nearest home town) back in 1903 (before my time!)

He’d also done shows at Wolverhampton and two longer runs in Birmingham as well as the rest of Britain and Europe. It amazes me how Buffalo Bill managed to get all those performers, animals and equipment across the Atlantic in the 1890s/1900s – he must’ve been a logistical genius!

The final part of this stop was the large gift shop. They had just about every cheap tat item available, but also some nicer stuff. They also had a snack bar, but we didn’t try it. We then got back on the bus and headed back to the hotel.

TGTips
The entry fee for the Buffalo Bill Museum is normally $5 (and worth it!) but this is waived for the Grayline tour customers

Before going for dinner, we headed across the road to the sister hotel, the Brown Palace. The hotel is connected to the Comfort Inn by a covered walkway. The Brown Palace was built by Henry Cordes Brown and opened in 1892, costing $1.6 million. It has never closed since.

All presidents since Theodore Roosevelt [watch out for him, he'll turn up frequently - he's my fave president, after all], except for Calvin Coolidge, have visited the Brown Palace and the Beatles visited in 1964. The atrium lobby area of the Brown Palace is amazing - with ornate cast iron railings and grillwork panels (it seems two were installed, and remain, upside down!)
We’d already agreed to go to The Cheesecake Factory on 16th Street. I love these guys – they have such huge menus (I mean number of items, don’t be pedantic!), even veggie Di has choices. Trouble is, the portions are just as huge, which means you’re always too stuffed (!) for their trademark cheesecake (there’s lots of them, too!)

The food is good, service pleasant and their cheesecake is amazing, especially the Dulce du Leche, which we had to order to go, until we had room for it (which turned out to be lunchtime tomorrow). I dropped them a Ted, though, cos Paul said the price of the wine was pretty high (well, for us) at $28 a bottle.

Back to the hotel, as we have the first of our "6.30am bags out, 7.30am on the bus" early morning starts tomorrow!


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