In the early part of the year, I’d started hearing and liking a number of songs from a group called the Turnpike Troubadours. I looked at their touring schedule to find a possible concert near me when I noticed they would be playing at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Denver. I’d always wanted to see a show at Red Rocks, and had wanted a reason to go see Betsy and Joe in Denver, so I built a trip around it.
Tuesday, June 12, 2018 BWI – Denver
I drove to BWI and caught my 4:15pm United flight to Denver (used miles for free ticket), arriving without incident at about 6pm, local time. I rented a car from Alamo and drove to Joe and Betsy’s apartment in Highlands Ranch for dinner. I arrived about 7:30 or so and had a very nice evening with Joe, Betsy, Sara and her boyfriend (whose name I have regretfully forgotten, but he manages a car wash and seemed very nice). Joe grilled steaks even though he was being a newfound vegetarian at the time. Cooking steaks for us and not eating any was a real test for him, he said. He passed. We had a very pleasant evening catching up and also sharing some Stranahan’s rye whiskey. I eventually checked into my room at the Comfort Suites nearby.
Wednesday, June 13, Denver
Betsy was on a break from school and Joe unexpectedly and very kindly took the day off to spend some time with me. We had kicked around various options of activities, but I wanted to keep things low-key and play tourist in the foothills above Denver. I’d suggested taking a walk in Evergreen, but Joe and Betsy thought it would be better to go a little further afield. So we drove through Evergreen on mountain roads toward the Lookout Mountain Nature Center. We took a short walk around the Lookout Mountain center but the vistas toward Denver were mostly blocked by grown-up trees, though there was an interesting old mansion, now used for weddings and events. The folks at the center suggested we might actually get better views of Denver and the surrounding mountains from the nearby Buffalo Bill grave and museum. It was true. We didn’t go in the museum but we visited Bill’s grave (which is not in Cody, Wyoming, though that was evidently still a point of contention). We learned these sites were part of the Lariat Loop, a scenic driving route that none of us knew about and maybe could use some better signage and promotion but may be the target of some future exploration.
Betsy directed us to an unexpected treat for lunch, a Tibetan restaurant in Golden called The Sherpa House. It was a heavily decorated house with multiple rooms and a courtyard where we had our buffet lunch. The food was tasty — not stellar but a sort of gentle variant of Indian cuisine — served by an apparently mostly Tibetan waitstaff. Betsy had been there before with teachers but it was a first for me and Joe, and a very pleasant interlude. After lunch we needed to head back toward Highlands Ranch to get Sara but stopped at a gourmet grocery, Tony’s Market, to pick up sandwiches and snacks for our tailgate dinner. We then rendezvoused with Sara and headed back out to Red Rocks for the show.
We arrived at Red Rocks around 5:00, parked and had our little tailgate dinner. It was tasty, though we each kind of wolfed through the food. It was a general admission show and we didn’t want to be too far back in line when the gates opened at 5:30. The show included three additional acts: Charley Crockett, The Old 97’s, and Randy Rogers Band. We got seats (bench spaces, really) about 15 rows from the stage, low enough that we could see pretty well, but also relatively close to the speakers and too low to get a view of the city. I took advantage of the hour wait for the show to wander the venue, take some photos, and get some beer. Red Rocks is no doubt one of the prettiest, most dramatic concert venues anywhere.
The show started at 6:30 with Charley Crockett who did an enjoyable, twangy set with sort of a latter day Hank Williams feel. About an hour later the Old 97’s came with a screechingly loud set that didn’t even include the one song of theirs I knew (“Murder”). Then came Randy Rogers who I didn’t know at all and turned out to be a good ol’ boy mainstream Texas country act whom none of us particularly enjoyed. But boy, the crowd of good ol’ boy, beer drinkin’ young folks all around us sure did. It was pretty miserable. The Troubadours finally came on after we were mostly worn out already, their volume mix was loud and heavy on the guitars, and the beer was really kicking in for the rest of the crowd. I couldn’t make out the band’s words or harmonies and barely recognized the handful of songs I knew. We left a little early as the show was reaching its noisy climax but we heard the encore songs as we headed to the parking lot. The overall show was a big disappointment, but it was fun to finally be at Red Rocks and have an evening with Joe, Betsy and Sara.
Thursday, June 14, Colorado Springs
I stayed in Denver one more day to recuperate, and Betsy agreed to go with me on a little excursion to Colorado Springs. We aimed to see the Air Force Academy campus, visit a new WWII airplane museum I found online, and get a nice lunch.
Betsy took the country roads for a more scenic hour’s drive to Colorado Springs. We found the National Museum of World War II Aviation first, in a hangar near the Colorado Springs airport. The museum looks a little grander on its website than in actuality…but they have big plans. We arrived just in time for a tour which started with an orientation lecture. The lecture ended up being a 30-minute rambling, snooze-inducing overview of the whole of World War II presented by an aging Air Force veteran and museum volunteer docent. Once we finally started the tour it was an equally snooze-inducing plane-by-plane discussion of every exhibit in the museum, starting with reconnaissance scout biplanes from the 1930s. We lasted about an hour overall before we bailed out and scooted through the rest of the museum. The museum gets great reviews online and I’m sure would be more interesting with a more energetic, informative guide. There are some great looking planes and you can get tours of the restoration area that looked interesting, but for us it was getting to be time for lunch, thank you very much.
We drove into downtown Colorado Springs and had a nice soup and sandwich at La Baguette. Then we headed uphill to very large and impressive campus of the Air Force Academy. They have a good visitor center with a little museum and orientation film that was worth a stop, then we went to the landmark architectural gem of the campus, the Air Force Chapel. The chapel is certainly impressive, more for its aluminum exterior design than the rather spartan interior. The chapel sits at the western (mountain) side of the Cadet Area which includes a large grassy Terrazzo, dormitories for all 4,000+ cadets and classrooms. The academy was on summer break so the campus was eerily quiet except for lots of summer sports camps using the many athletic fields.
Our day of sightseeing concluded with the drive back to Betsy’s on other scenic roads. We gathered one more time for a belated birthday dinner for Joe and Sara at an Italian favorite of theirs, Chianti. A very pleasant evening was had by all, finished off with rye whiskey nightcaps at Betsy and Joe’s place. The only complication of the day was that we all forgot that, given the international date line, it had also been Kristen’s birthday in Australia. She evidently called Betsy and Joe, a little brokenhearted, later that night.
Friday, June 15, Denver – Home
My flight home was at 2:30pm so we had time for one more breakfast/brunch with Betsy. Sara joined us and we drove to a place they recommended, Sam’s No. 3. It’s a grand old institution with gut-busting portions of diner and Tex-Mex fare that was (unfortunately) right up my alley. I had a had time choosing from their menu but ended up with a massive chili burger and fries that I didn’t really need but ended up finishing. From there, I was able to navigate to the airport, turn in my rental car and caught my flight home without further incident or calories.
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