We woke up early, as we would be leaving our RV Park in Golden for the first time in a few days. We packed up and headed out driving Bubbles for the first time as we had taken Uber everywhere else in Denver so far. First stop for the morning was a trip to the famous Denver amphitheater Red Rocks. Red Rocks is world famous as a concert venue shaped by nature but until recently we had thought that’s all it was. We had found out from our friends Dave & Jen who used to live in Denver that Red Rocks was also a park and you could go there for free anytime there wasn’t a concert going on. We were only about 20 minutes from the venue so it didn’t take too long to drive over there. This was also the first time that we had started to drive into the foothills of the Rockies and boy did we love it. Almost immediately the views were amazing. It felt like you were driving on top of the world. We turned on the 2-lane road to get up to the main parking lot, which twisted and turned until we finally reached the top. We parked and started to walk to the concert venue. This was about 10am on a Saturday morning and we were a bit surprised as there were people in gym clothes everywhere. We wondered what was going on but soon found out once we reached the top of the venue that people were using it as a gym of sorts in the morning. On top of watching people run up the stairs the venue is amazing. There are curved red rocks on either side forming the amphitheater and we were told that it is the world’s only naturally formed perfect sound amphitheater. Now while I’m not totally convinced that it’s perfect sound the scenery is just amazing. We promised ourselves that we would be back to see a concert at some point in the future.
Next up for the day was a drive down to see the city of Colorado Springs. It took a few hours to get there through a sea of traffic (the Denver suburbs seem to go on for a few hundred miles) we finally made it. Colorado Springs is probably best known for being home to the Air Force Academy. While we didn’t see much of that it was a nice small city. We parked, found a coffee shop then took a walk up and down the main street. There were a good number of little shops and restaurants that we wandered in and out of picking up a few post cards before getting back into Bubbles and continuing. A few days earlier my Dad had surprised us by booking us a room at the Broadmoor, which is an old resort hotel on the edge of Colorado Springs right on the Rockies. After half an hour or so of driving we arrived and boy we were in for a treat. We checked in and found out that they had numerous restaurants on the property. We hadn’t been out for dinner in months so we dressed up (or as much as we could) for the occasion. The restaurant that we chose had a French theme and it was delicious. After dinner we walked around the resort spending time looking at the photo’s of famous people who had been at the resort from the 1930’s through today. After wandering around the property for a bit longer we wandered back to our room full and happy.
The next day we were headed to Breckenridge to spend the night with friends of the family Jay & Sarah. First stop for the day was just outside of Colorado Springs at a park called “Garden of the Gods”. The garden is an area with huge red rock boulders and mountains. It was pretty awe inspiring driving up as the foothills of the mountains are more or less plain greens and browns then you turn a corner and wham, big areas of red rock. We stopped at the visitor center looking around before going out on the deck to get the full view. We took a few pictures before jumping in the car and moving on. The trip to Breckenridge took us on two lane roads through the mountains for a few hours. It was pretty awesome as this was the first time we had really gone into the Rockies. While Denver is pretty high in altitude getting to Breckenridge and the town itself is much higher. Breckenridge sits at almost 10,000 feet in altitude. We drove through long valleys and over beautiful mountain passes and finally reached the town. Jay greeted us when we arrived and the first thing that we noticed was how cold it was. While it was in the high 80’s in Colorado Springs it wasn’t much warmer than 50 in Breckenridge. We quickly changed clothes, went inside and were met by 2 cute dogs Rosie & River. We caught up with Jay over some great Breckenridge bourbon until Sarah got home. She had been out at work and shopping and brought back groceries to make a great chicken and noodle stir-fry. We talked as she got out her wok and cooked up a great meal. (She has some serious stir-fry wok skills and we learned a lot). We then showed them some of our pictures and shared some stories of the road before going to bed that night. The next morning we got up and wanted to explore the town. Jay & Sarah had left early for work but Jay was nice enough to leave his keys for his off road Jeep Wrangler so that we could tour the town without worrying about finding a parking spot big enough for Bubbles. We jumped in and I was in heaven. I have a Jeep Wrangler myself but Jay’s is jacked up with large tires and is a manual transmission. Driving it was a blast! We made it to town walking around going shop to shop, even stopping in the highest altitude running shop in the country, 9600 feet! Sadly we had to leave town a bit early as we had tickets to see the Colorado Rockies baseball team that night back in Denver. We returned the Jeep, said goodbye to Sarah as she had returned to let the dogs out and headed back towards Denver.
We had booked the same RV Park that we had stayed in previously in Golden so finding our way back wasn’t difficult. After checking in and getting Bubbles set up in a spot we hailed an Uber and were headed back towards Denver. We arrived downtown around 3, as we didn’t want to have to deal with rush hour traffic. We made our way back to Great Divide brewing sitting outside having a beer and watching people go by. After stopping by one more bar for a happy hour drink it was time to walk over to Coors Field. It was only a few blocks walk before we were there. It was a pretty neat stadium since it was right in the middle of downtown so it seemed that a lot of other people had done the same as us then were just slowly walking over. The streets around the stadium were blocked off so we were able to get some pretty good pictures from a vantage point that you wouldn’t normally be able to. We entered the stadium and found our seats. The Rockies were playing Atlanta that night and there was a pair of Braves fan sitting next to us looking pretty happy to be there as well. We watched for the first few innings before getting up and walking around the concourse before picking what we wanted to eat and going back to our seats. I’m not sure about everyone in the stadium but I’d bet a lot of people go there just for the food as they seem to have hundreds of choices for things to eat and drink. After a few more innings we decided to explore the rest of the stadium walking and watching from almost every vantage point that we could. As it had been a long day already and we didn’t want to have to wait a long time for a cab back to the RV park we left in the 8th inning while it was still a 0-0 game. (We did hear the next day that the Rockies did win!) We got back to Bubbles tired but happy. We had another great day in Breckenridge and in Denver.
Next up we explore Northern Colorado!!!!
