I don't know what other people would do faced with a morning in Denver, but I chose to take a tour of the Colorado State Capital (with a fifth grade class). A true mark of my dorkiness, I guess... But I thought the tour was great! And free, which is a huge plus.
Maybe it was the shiny gold dome that drew me to it! Back in 1867, when they started construction of the building, they were going to put a copper dome on. But since they were trying to build it all with native materials, the gold-miners got together and donated enough gold to cover the roof instead. It took 200 ounces of 24 karat gold. Today, that's worth about $146,680. Celebrities wear more gold than that to the Oscars... They hammer it down until it is thinner than tissue paper.
One of the other local materials they used in the construction was this rose onyx from a Colorado quarry. They used all the rose onyx they found in that quarry, and there has never been any more of it found anywhere. That makes this stone much more valuable than the gold on the roof. This picture doesn't demonstrate it well, but the pattern of the onyx varies from piece to piece, and there have been thousands of pictures found in the stone - from a turkey to George Washington's profile.
The rest of the capital was built with Colorado marble and Colorado granite. They spent more excavating and getting the marble to Denver than they would have had they shipped in the marble from Italy. It took 20 years to build, at a cost of three million dollars. The brochure says that that cost cannot even be converted to today's market. Awesome. A priceless building.
Being the Mile High City, they had to officially mark the actual point where it is 5,280 feet high. One group of students (University of Colorado), measured it in 1909 in put in a marker. After that was stolen several times, they engraved it on the granite step. Then, in 1947, Colorado State University students measured it again, and found that the first marker was wrong. Thus the brass marker you see two steps above the engraving. Finally, in 2002, the US Government changed the official height of sea level (so powerful they are!), and the current marker is a few steps below these two.
I wandered around downtown Denver for a little while. It is a really great city, though there are lots of homeless people. It was like homeless person mecca. Which means it was kind of perfect for me today. Seeing as all of my belongings are currently in my car, I am kind of homeless, in a sense. Or, I guess you could say that my current home is... the Comfort Inn room I'm in right now.
I left downtown Denver (it only took me twenty minutes and a trip past the international freight yards to find the highway again) and started up the mountains. Chugga chugga. I was totally reviving and living out one of my favorite childhood books - The Little Engine that Could. Or in this case, the Little Toyota Tacoma that Could.
Somewhere along the road today, I started making sounds like I was in Mario Kart. Traffic was stop and go due to some construction. I kept shouting "Here we go!" in that Mario way. And "woo-hoo!" every time I went over a bump. My truck is so loaded down that the shocks are strained - when I go over bumps I go Bumpy-bumpy-bump. It is fun. Woo-hoo!!
My other planned stop for the day was Buffalo Bill's grave. He was buried on Lookout Mountain in Golden, Colorado. It has a great view (as one would guess "Lookout Mountain" would)
I wasn't all that much of a Buffalo Bill aficionado before today, but it was neat to learn about him. According to his wife, one of his last requests was to be buried here. Two other towns wanted his body, though - Cody, Wyoming (he co-founded the town), and a place in Nebraska (where he lived most of his life). For a while, the National Guard had a tank at the grave to prevent people from those towns from stealing the body. Finally, after his widow's death and burial there, they poured a ton of concrete over the bodies. Weird.
So, traffic was difficult today - Colorado is definitely not a place to drive through if you're at all sleepy (I wasn't). Partially because of the traffic and the roads, but also because it is freaking GORGEOUS. Following are a few pictures I took while I drove - I just held up my camera and clicked. I took about 70 pictures... some of them turned out great.
Peachy!
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