Autumn in Colorado and Utah - Denver

We began our 11 day trip with a couple of days in Denver before we go up to Estes Park for the biennial BeadforLife conference.  More about that in the next blog.  While this is our third trip to Colorado, we never have spent any significant time in Denver other than the airport.  This time we wanted to explore The Mile High City a bit more making sure to steer clear of Sports Authority Field!

A three hour mechanical delay leaving Chicago meant we wouldn't be doing much sightseeing the first.  We navigated our way through rush hour traffic to reach our hotel in Lakewood just west of Denver.  However we were able to experience Casa Bonita that evening.  Experience is exactly the right word.  The web site describes this unique restaurant this way:  "We are a Mexican restaurant and family entertainment destination located in Denver, Colorado. One of the nation's top ten roadside attractions, Casa Bonita has been delighting audiences for over 40 years."



The food was delicious.  While not "all you can eat," it is actually more than a normal person can eat plus the basket of warm sopapillas.  The preferred way to eat is to bite off a corner and then squeeze in honey from the bottle on every table.  Oh my!  I finished off my meal with a scoop of fried ice cream!  Oh my!  Oh my!  I didn't even bother to look up Weight Watcher points.  This was Marilyn's first trip to Casa Bonita but I had been there more than once when I lived in the Denver area in the seventies.  It was a great place to take the at the time six kids.  The food was reasonably priced but it was the entire experience that kept bringing us back especially on one memorable Halloween.  It is one memory of Denver that the kids always talk about.

What to say about the "experience?"  How about cliff divers (see video), gun fights, gorilla show, fountains, haunted house, Black Bart's hideout cave, an old mine in which you can eat...and all this inside and happening around you while you eat and eat....and eat?

You can see why Halloween was an all year affair!  By the way, if you bought two fried ice creams, you get the third free.  Just sayin'.

Click here to view photos and videos of our evening in this unique venue.

We spent the next day in the Denver area.  We had a lot of options:  downtown Denver with all its attractions, Front Range towns like Evergreen and Golden, and even mining towns like Idaho Springs and Central City.  We couldn't do it all although we wanted to so we headed to the Denver Botanical Gardens as our first stop.  It turned out to be so interesting and so BIG that we spent the entire day there before we head north to Estes Park.

Four Towers Pool with Science Pyramid.

Fall crocus in bloom

Spent clematis

The Denver Botanical Gardens at York Street is the central garden comprising 24 acres in the heart of a Denver residential and park area.  One is tempted to think that a fall garden doesn't offer much since the vibrant blooms of summer are gone.  While that is true, they offer a unique charm of plants that do bloom in the fall and more interesting perhaps are the spent blooms of summer that a unique charm.  I took many photos of the latter but I think my favorite are the spent structures of a clematis vine highlighted by the sunlight.

This welcomed us as we entered.

In addition to what seemed like a hundred different gardens, there were several pools and water features and sculptures throughout.  The most dramtic sculptures were the La Calavera Catrina by Ricardo Soltero.  "La Calavera Catrina ('Dapper Skeleton', 'Elegant Skull') is a 1910–1913 zinc etching by famous Mexican printmaker, cartoon illustrator and lithographer José Guadalupe Posada.  The image depicts a female skeleton dressed only in a hat befitting the upper class outfit of a European of her time. Her chapeau en attende is related to European styles of the early 20th century. She is offered as a satirical portrait of those Mexican natives who, Posada felt, were aspiring to adopt European aristocratic traditions in the pre-revolution era. She, in particular, has become an icon of the Mexican Día de los muertos, or Day of the Dead." (Wikipedia)  There are several of these throughout.  You will see many of them in the photos I took.

"So proud of all my children"

There is also a collection of 60 sculptures from Zimbabwe artists entitled Chapungu.  These depict traditional themes in stone sculptures mostly in a modern style.

Click here to see more of the photos I took in the Denver Botanical Gardens.

After a stop in Golden for a Starbucks beverage, we head to the YMCA of the Rocky Mountains in Estes Park for our next three days/.