We're headed 105 miles southeast to Standley Lake Regional Park in Westminster at the north end of Denver. To get there, we get to cross the Rockies while it's snowing. Awesome!
We spend a couple of days at Standley. It's no longer snowing, but our time there is rainy and overcast. While we are there, we visit Boulder, a cool college town, and Arvada, apparently a pickleball hot spot.
From Standley, we head 35 miles south to Chatfield State Park in Littleton at the south end of Denver. The Denver metropolitan area has a population of over 3 million, and we got to see how much it looks like many other large cities as we drove through.
Chatfield has a resident herd of deer, that we saw frequently, and numerous bunnies that taunted Tank mercilessly.
We start our first day with breakfast at Pierre Michel French Cafe. The owner is a transplant from France who came to the US to give his children more opportunity. Breakfast is the Croc’Brie, ham and brie on their home made Brioche bread, for Tom, and blueberry and raspberry French toast made from their home made Brioche bread, for Wendy. Do I even need to say that their home made Brioche bread is heavenly?
After breakfast, we drive around the foothill area of town and end up in Morrision at the Red Rocks Amphitheater.
It's an open-air amphitheater in a spectacular setting. We did not get to go inside because they were setting up for a concert, but Tom decides to take a little hike to see if he can get a better view.
Red Rocks is also home to the Colorado Country Music Hall of Fame. Their biggest exhibit is of John Denver memorabilia. One other cools thing about the Hall of Fame is that they allow dogs in the building. National parks and many state parks won't even allow dogs on the trails let alone in buildings, so this is pretty astounding for us.
Driving through the Rockies in the snow sounds pretty magical. As long as the roads are clear! What a change in scenery. Looks a little barren after the trees and meadows of RMNP. Glad your knee is better Wendy.
ReplyDeleteThanks Brad. It's nice being able to sleep without re-injuring it.
DeleteDown in the Denver metro area, maybe also because it was late summer, it was high deserty looking. I'm sure it looks totally different with a light layer of snow, or nice and green in the spring. Still not alot of big trees in the area.
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