Day 3:
- Left campsite around 8:30am
- Visited downtown Golden and walked along Clear Creek
- Gas stop in Golden (14.2mpg, mostly city driving)
- Visited Heritage Square and rode the Alpine slide
- Lunch and Evan’s naptime at the camper at noon
- Visited the Molly Brown house
- Visited 16th Street Mall in downtown Denver
- Dinner at On the Border
- Took Evan into the Colorado Mills mall to play in the play area
- Returned to camp around 7:00pm
This morning we visited historic downtown Golden. We mostly spent some time walking along the paved trail that follows Clear Creek through town. Evan got to stick his hands in the rushing water, but would have jumped in if we let him. After that, we wandered around Heritage Square, a little tourist spot just a half-mile from the campground. The place seems to be designed like an old Victorian town with lots of little shops. We rode an “Alpine slide”, which looks kind of like the track they run bobsleds on, but you go down sitting on this flat wheeled platform with a brake handle. You have to take a chairlift to the top. Dusty took a turn down the hill as well. The track is about a half-mile long and very fast (unless you ride the brakes the entire way down…)
After lunch we toured Molly Brown’s (a.k.a The Unsinkable Molly Brown) house. Evan was very well behaved and let us carry him the entire time, which surprised me. Evan came up with a new sign; whenever Dusty wants to pick him up, she claps twice to get his attention and holds out her hands. Even though we weren’t teaching him that, he now claps twice when he wants picked up.
Next we visited the 16th Street Mall downtown, which is basically a long strip of stores and restaurants in the lower floors of some tall buildings. We didn’t go in any stores, but we rode the bus to one end and walked back. It gave us a pretty good idea of what downtown Denver was like. After dragging him around all day, we took Evan into the mall to play in the little padded play area they had. Evan struck up a conversation with a little blond boy a month younger than him. He fell asleep shortly after we returned to camp. When we got back to camp, we discovered that our air conditioner had frozen up. We had left it running on low to take the dampness out of the camper. We’re letting it thaw now, so hopefully everything’s fine with that.
Today is pretty clear, and though it’s hazy at a distance, we have empirical proof that mountains do exist!
More stuff we saw:
- The sun, and a hint of mountains
- A “Little Guy” teardrop trailer, which moved in next to us
- A prickly pear cactus (reminds me of being ten years old)
- The US Mint building
- Busses driven by electric motors powered by small natural gas generators (very quiet).
- A creek the size of any Illinois farm creek, but with water running orders of magnitude faster
- A giant chunk of ice inside our air conditioner
- A local with just the word F*** on his belt buckle
- The Coors Brewery, seen from downtown Golden
- 6 Starbucks in 6 blocks at the 16th Street Mall
- Several restaurants named “Chili’s Tooâ€
- Thousands of locals, most of which seem to be “lower maintenance†than folks back home
- Only one guy panhandling, and one guy wanting us to sign a petition for domestic partnerships
- Free municipal wifi downtown