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Colorado
June 14th - 20th & July 25 - 28, 2021
Glenwood Springs July 27, 2012
June 14th (Monday): Off to Denver

The reasons are a bit of a long story but we had some stuff that needed to be done in Denver and ended up turning it into a sort of mini-family reunion. Unfortunately, while COVID restrictions are being removed, or at least seriously loosened up, nearly everywhere in the US, if anything airlines and airports have only gotten stricter since our trip to Hawaii back in the winter. At least getting to Denver is a much shorter and simpler trip than Hawaii. Airports are certainly a bit busier now than they were back then though.
Anyway, we made it to Denver and headed to the hotel. One of the first things I noticed when I left the airport was the humidity. Or, more specifically, the lack there-of. Now Colorado is my home state, and I went to university in Arizona, so I'm used to dry heat, but this is the first time in years that I've actually been anywhere with a dry climate. Takes a bit of getting used to, but I'd say that I still prefer it to high humidity.
Moving on, we got a taxi, checked into the hotel, got a late lunch, and played around the pool for a while until my parents and brother's family arrived. We eventually walked down the 16th Street Mall (downtown Denver's shopping and dining street) looking for a place for dinner. Now, while I am from Colorado, I used to live on the Western side of the state and only visited Denver (on the Eastern edge) every once in a while, so my memories of the city aren't especially detailed. Still, the downtown area seems a lot more built up and developed than I remember. At the same time, I'm pretty sure it used to be cleaner and didn't have so many homeless people. I've got some good guesses as to why it's like that...but I don't want to get political here. Let's just say that downtown Denver has some nice spots...but I probably wouldn't want to walk around there late as night.
In the end, one of my cousins and her family joined us for dinner, our kids played around a bit, and we wrapped things up for the day.
June 15th (Tuesday): Denver Butterfly Pavilion
Another cousin and her family arrived late the pervious night, getting the whole group together. The morning was focused on taking care of business (the stuff we came to Denver for in the first place). But in the afternoon, we took a bit of time to visit the Denver Butterfly Pavilion. It also contains a small museum with some other insects and fish and stuff. The pavilion itself is pretty nice, with a large variety of butterflies. Not quite as impressive as the one back in Gainesville, Florida, but good. Back at the hotel, we all gathered around the pool with a bunch of takeout while the kids ran around, hit each other with noodles, and all that other pool type stuff. A bit hectic, but they had fun.
June 16th (Wednesday): Water World
This was the day for our big family activity and we decided on Water World. It's not just the biggest water park in Denver, it's actually one of the biggest ones in the entire country, with a huge variety of slides, including some very unique ones such as Journey to the Center of the Earth, which is a Disney style ride with animatronics and everything. I've been to Water World a few times in the past but, naturally, it's been quite a long time. And it's only gotten bigger. Honestly, I'd love to go back sometime without Zack so I could try out all the slides. That said, compared to most of the water parks I've visited, Water World features a very large number of slides with no height requirement, so it's actually pretty great even with little kids. Another nice thing is that, both at the hotel pool and at Water World, Zack finally started to really enjoy the water. I mean, he always liked playing in water but, for the past two or three years, anything deeper than a bathtub made him pretty nervous. Now though, he was ok with me carrying him around the deep end of the pool and he really enjoyed the water slides. That's a nice change, and opens up a lot of fun options in the future.
Anyway, Water World is still the best water park I've ever been to and I highly recommend it if you're ever in Denver over the summer. Unfortunately, since it's a water park, and I had to keep a close eye on Zack the whole time, I wasn't able to take any photos. But we all had fun and I'd love to visit again if I get the chance.
June 17th (Thursday): The Denver Museum of Nature and Science
My cousins and their families left in the morning, but my parents and my brother's family stuck around. We had one more day in Denver before moving to our next destination so we decided to visit the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, which I had always loved as a kid. It's still just as good as I remembered. We didn't get around to any of the special exhibits (some of which looked pretty cool), but we did go through the excellent rock and mineral section and the especially large animal and habitat area. There's also a fun body and health exhibit where you save your data to a card that you can use in a number of different displays to measure your fitness, senses, and the like. Of course, the kids loved the hall of dinosaurs, which is also top notch. And while they had it on timed entry while we were there, they also had an entire kids museum style section which Zack could have probably spent half the day in by itself. I've been to a lot of of natural history museums over the years, both as a child and an adult, and I would say that Denver's is easily in the top ten, possibly the top five. So it's another good spot to visit if you're in the area.
Later in the day, while Zack was napping, a few of us took a walk around near the Colorado state capital and surrounding government buildings, which were right by our hotel. The buildings are impressive, and the area has some nice parks as well. Unfortunately, it's also overrun by homeless (the previous photo is very carefully cropped to keep all of that out of frame) and some sections looked rather dangerous. Honestly, walking around that area was more depressing than anything else. Although I moved away long ago, I still consider Colorado my home state and there's a lot I love about it. So it's kind of sad to see the condition that parts of it are in. Fortunately, downtown Denver isn't representative of the whole state. But it's not the only bad area either...
Anyway, all of that aside, I did enjoy our visit to Denver and we'll actually be going back for a few days in late July to finish up the business that sent us there in the first place. But, while this was our last day in Denver, our current trip to Colorado wasn't quite done yet...
June 18th (Friday): Manitou and Great Wolf
Leaving Denver behind, we headed off towards Colorado Springs. But we made a stop a Manitou Springs along the way. Manitou is a fun little town with a bunch of interesting stores and restaurants. If you were wondering, the "springs" part of its name comes from a number of natural springs that are scattered throughout. You can actually walk around and try the water from each of them if you're so inclined. They're naturally carbonated and all taste a little different. Zack was a big fan. There's a lot of other attractions in Manitou as well but my favorite is the penny arcade, which is spread across several buildings and outdoor areas and features a wide variety of old arcade and carnival type games from vehicle rides, to pinball machines, to skeetball, to classic video games, to really old coin-op. There's even old soda machines, just to keep the theme going. There aren't a lot of places like this left in the country and at some point I'd really love to spend a few hours there all on my own. But playing around with Zack was fun too.
We spent a while walking around and playing in the arcade then, after a late lunch, headed off to Colorado Springs. Or, more specifically, Great Wolf Lodge. Great Wolf is a chain of family resort hotels scattered across the US. What makes them special? Well, aside from some fun room layouts for kids (like fancy bunk beds), they've got a lot of family friendly attractions right in the hotel. The biggest draw is probably the indoor water park. While not quite as big as some of the ones I visited in Japan, the size and selection of slides and other attractions was rather impressive. Better than some of the regular water parks I've been to, actually. Back in Denver, Zack seemed slightly more interested in playing in water than normal, but here he really started to get into it. He loved the slides, wave pool, and the play areas. He was even ok wearing a vest and going around with me in a deeper pool. As a side note, there were a few pretty good slides for older kids and adults as well.
But the water park isn't everything. After dinner we started to explore the adventure park. As a note, while the water park is free for hotel guests, a lot of the other attractions do cost money, but there are some pretty good package deals (we got unlimited access to the main stuff for a very reasonable price). That evening, Zack and his cousin tried out the climbing wall and then we wrapped up the day with mini bowling (small balls and a shorter lane), which Zack really loved, bringing an end to a really fun day.
June 19th (Saturday): Great Wolf and Garden of the Gods
In the morning, we took Zack to Great Wolf's arcade for a bit while waiting for some of the other attractions to open. Then we played some mini-golf, which Zack enjoyed, even though he did have some trouble with the rules.
A bit later, we left the hotel for to visit Garden of the Gods. It's a National Landmark know for its impressive rock fins and spires. We took a short hike through the most popular section. It's a very scenic area and gets quite a lot of rock climbers. As a kid, I always liked climbing on the rocks as well (though just the easy stuff that didn't need climbing gear). So we couldn't resist doing a little bit of clambering around.
Back at Great Wolf, I took Zack on the high ropes course. I've been on more complex ones, of course, but it was still fun and Zack really enjoyed it. And, with a little help, he was able to get across most of the sections. In a lot of ways, he really impressed me on this trip. Then it was back to the water park, followed a bit more mini-golf and bowling to finish up the day.
Got to say, great wolf is a lot of fun as a family getaway. There's also shows, story time, etc. Not to mention Magiquest (a sort of AR game) if you want to spend some extra money. Maybe not worth it just for adults (though it depends what you enjoy), but great for young kids to mid-teens at least.
June 20th (Sunday): Returning Home
This trip was always intended to be on the short side so, before long, it was time to head home. Not too much to write about though. We drove back to the Denver Airport, said goodbye to my family, and hung out in the terminal for a bit (it's a pretty nice airport) then had a non-stop flight back to Virginia. Fortunately, everything was fine back home. I'm certainly glad that Zack does better on planes these days. There was a period where keeping him under control on a flight was a constant struggle. Now, he's usually pretty content to sit and play with his tablet. And that was our trip to Colorado. It's was short but fun. Though it's too bad that I went all the way there but didn't get to the west side of the state where I used to live. It would have been nice to see how things are back there. Maybe another time...
July 25th (Sunday): Back to Denver
My parents and I had to go back to Denver to wrap up the business stuff from our previous trip. This time we kept it shorter, without the full on family reunion (though my cousins did briefly join us as well).
The trip there was fine up until it came time to pick up the rental car I'd reserved. We arrived at the rental agency to find a massive line. Of course, it might have helped if more than a handful of the two dozen or so cashier stations were actually manned... Around an hour and fifteen minutes later I finally got through that and we headed outside to get the car. Then we got stuck in another line for around half an hour because the agency's local wi-fi network was down so they couldn't use it to assign the cars. And, once we finally got our car, loaded everything up, and headed out, we had to wait for another 15 minutes or so to actually leave the parking lot since the guy manning the exit gate was taking a strangely long time to check out the people infront of us. Maybe we just had bad luck, but it certainly didn't make me want to use Avis again.
Fortunately, everything else went smoothly. We got to our hotel, checked in, found a good Chinese place for dinner, and that was that.
July 26th (Monday): The Denver Zoo
Since we did the big museum and water park last time, we decided to use our free day on this trip for the Denver Zoo. Oddly enough, I only went there once as a kid and my memories are pretty vague (we generally went to the zoo in Colorado Springs instead), so my expectations weren't especially high. Turns out though, it's pretty nice. The path is a long loop that will take you to all the usual zoo animals like bears and rhinos. And we happened see them feed the orangutans, which let me get some good pictures. One of the buildings also doubled as a mini aquarium. It's was a fun day and Zack enjoyed seeing the animals. I wouldn't say that there's anything about the Denver Zoo that really makes it "special" compared to some of the other zoos I've visited, but it's an all around good zoo with a lot to see.
We finished up around mid-afternoon and headed back to Cherry Creek, the part of Denver we were staying in this time. Cherry Creek is sort of the artsy and ritzy part of Denver, featuring a number of streets lined with restaurants, nice shops, and art galleries, along with a big fancy mall (which has a pretty cool kids play area). No need to worry about crime and homeless camps like the downtown area and a rather fun place to walk around. I found a neat tea shop and visited an Amazon retail store (yes, there are a few out there, with some pretty good deals for Prime members).
July 27th - 28th (Tuesday - Wednesday): Wrapping Up
As with the last trip, Tuesday morning was used to take care of the business that brought us to Denver in the first place. After that, we did a bit more shopping and walking around in Cherry Creek then had dinner with my cousin. Come Wednesday, it was time to go home. Fortunately, returning the car went a whole lot smoother than picking it up and, aside from some turbulence, our flight back home passed without incident as well.
As the moment, I don't think we'll need to go back to Denver again any time soon (everything should be taken care of at this point), but you never know. If you do find yourself going there, I would certainly recommend Cherry Creek as a nice (if somewhat expensive) area to stay during your visit.
Glenwood Springs July 27, 2012




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