The third and final of our Summer ’23 Inspirational Vacations ended on Wednesday when we returned from Denver. When Mr. Smith suddenly passed away earlier this year we kind of freaked out and decided to take as many vacations as possible, know that not only is life short, but sometimes it’s drastically short. Mr. Smith was big on unapologetically using all your vacation time, and that’s what we tried to do. But I came home from Denver feeling vacationed-out. It was too soon after our Miami trip and I personally didn’t feel like I had enough time at home to recharge between vacations. First-world problems, I know. Hell, these are 1%-er problems; “Help, I’ve taken too many vacations! Boo hoo!”.

Regardless, we had a great time in Denver. We left home Saturday morning, did the airport thing, had short flight to Denver, and took the shuttle to get the rental car. Last time in Denver we had to take the metro train to parking garage, which was like a 20 minute ride. You see, Denver’s airport was built faaaaar away from the city. It’s actually located in Missouri, two states over from Denver. Not really, but it feels that way.

We got stuck with a Hyundai Sante Fe, probably the worst rental vehicle I’ve ever had. It was uncomfortable for all five of us, the buttons on the console were in bad positions, and the little screen had the worst user-interface and GPS I’ve ever seen. It couldn’t find the address of our AirBnB. Plus it had no engine power at all. It was hard to merge on the highways due to lack of acceleration. I’m going to have to start renting Teslas on these trips.

We ate at In n Out in Aurora while we waited for the AirBnB to open up. It was ok food. There’s a lot of Spanish speak in Aurora. I really didn’t feel like speaking Spanish here like I wanted to do in Miami. I just don’t think of Denver as a Spanish sort of place. But the name Colorado is Spanish, so I shouldn’t be surprised. I still have Spanish as a language to learn on my Duolingo account but I’ll probably drop it, like I dropped Romanian, Latin, and German. There’s just not enough time to learn everything properly. I’ll just stick to boning up on French in anticipation of a hopeful Quebec City vacation next summer.

We went to our rental, which was the basement of an older lady’s house. Lucky for us she was gone the whole time of our vacation. The neighborhood was nice.

We drove downtown and walked around the 16th Street shops until the people thinned out, then we turned around and walked back to the parking garage. We got some ice cream and chocolate, staples of any good vacation. Then we drove to Larimer Square and checked out some shops. We went into a cool vintage clothing shop where the girls got some earrings and rings. We went home and ordered the largest pizza I’ve ever seen with my own eyes. We tore into it but still only ate half. Huge, I’m telling you.

Sunday we didn’t have anything on the itinerary. After doing a bad job creating the itinerary for the last Denver trip two years ago, I was hesitant about cramming too much into this trip. I didn’t plan enough though, as it turns out. We went to the Molly Brown house downtown, which was cool. Going into mansions/cool building is always on the itinerary. Then we drove out to the west end to go to Lair O’ the Bear trail for some easy hiking, but the cars were backed up two miles going up the turn off in the mountains. So we skipped that and headed south to Castle Rock to hike up the namesake rock there.

It was fun hiking up to Castle Rock. It was short too, it probably only took 20 minutes to wind our way up. It was hot as all get out too, which was acceptable for a short hike. You don’t actually get to go up on top of the Rock but it’s still pretty far up to get to the base. You’re right by the interstate, so it’s not too picturesque. But it’s still nice.

After this hike we hit the famed Outlet Malls at Castle Rock. The wife and Elsa got some Kate Spade purses, Jack and I walked around looking for something to drink, and I got a cool looking shirt at Norrona, some Norwegian clothing brand store.

After this we went to the Aurora Reservoir so that we could swim and cool off. Apparently half of the USA had the same idea as us – fly to Denver, go to the Aurora Reservoir – because the line of cars was a mile long and not moving at the entrance. So we turned around and tried Lair O’ the Bear again, which was easy to get to this time. It was an easy 1-mile flat hike, and very pretty. We all took our shoes off and stood in the cold creek water. It was great and created a core memory for me lol.

Monday morning we headed south to Colorado Springs for our Garden of the Gods e-bike tour. After learning our lesson on our “leisurely” Maine biking trip, we wisely chose the e-bike option here. It also turned out to be 94 degrees, like the hottest day of the year for the area. Lucky for us there was no humidity, so that plus the breezed coming down from the mountains made the weather passable.

It was funny to see all of us learn to operate the electric bikes since none of us had done that before. There’s a slight learning curve on how to get started and change speeds but we got the hang of it and had a great time riding around and getting pictures.

After that we went into town there and went to Scheels to check out what another one looked like. I think the one in Springfield is designed nicer. We ate Whataburger…What a Let Down! It was ok food but nothing magical like Jack and I had in Dallas in 2020.

We hung around home that night and watched The Office. I have grown to like that show since I watched all the episodes available on Southwest flights. Elsa likes it. We also watched old Looney Tunes on the Boomerang channel. Life is good!

I was feeling sort of down about missing out on the practices for the musical back home. You don’t think about this sort of thing in January when planning trips, but after hanging out with the cast for a week I felt bad for leaving them, when I had no clue of what to do backstage. Next summer I don’t want to miss too many practices and definitely none during the week of the show. So we have the Disney Cruise planned in early June. That might be the only(!) vacation we take, between ball games and the musical. We actually cut this Denver vacation short by a day to give the girls an extra day to practice the show. We had nothing planned for Wednesday and were going to fly out early Thursday. We rebooked the flight for 5:20AM Wednesday morning and saved some money. So we did this rebooking and then found out that there was no practice on Wednesday. D’oh!

Tuesday we went up into the mountains again, this time to Georgetown to ride a steam locomotive that took us to a sliver mine. We learned all about how the miners worked 100 years ago. Then we put on hard hats and headed into the mines, which were a chilly 42 degrees. The ceilings were so low; I had to duck the whole time while walking. It was a great experience and the train ride went through beautiful countryside/mountain landscapes. We also got to pan for gold. Everyone’s kit had sand with a few flakes of gold in it, so that was nice.

After that we went home and rested for a couple of hours, then got ready to go see Killer Queen at the Red Rocks Amphitheater. We parked a couple of hours before the show but there was still a long line waiting to get into the seating area. We went to Red Rocks two years ago but didn’t get to see the stage or seats because a band was doing their soundcheck. So it was nice for everyone to see the actual amphitheater part.

The band was about ready to come out when they stopped the show due to imminent weather. Then it started raining. Then the rainbow came out. Then it stopped raining. Then the band came out, playing One Vision as the first song. The Freddy Mercury guy did a great job of singing and dressing and looking like Freddy, and he did even better at getting the crowd up and on their feet and into the music. It was a great show! And loud too! But my hearing is already shot so it’s not like it’s going to get any better at this point.

There was a second stoppage for rain halfway through the show. Me and the kids got drenched. I got so wet that it kind of drained all the energy out of me. Plus the thought of getting up at 2:30AM to go back to the airport was weighing heavily on my mind. Everybody else wanted to stay for the rest of the show so I dealt with it. I’m glad we stayed. The rest of the songs were amazing. It’s not like we’ll get to see Queen with Freddy ever again, and I’d rather see this tribute band than the original Queen with Adam Lambert. I guess I’d pay to see Brian May. He’s such an underrated guitarist. He is such a great songwriter that I don’t think people pay enough attention to his memorable solos and phrasing.

So we went home. I got to take the first shower then went to bed for two hours of sleep. We got up, packed the car, and made it to the rental return place at 3AM. The shuttle took us back to the airport – the OMG Everyone and their Dog is Flying Southwest this Morning airport. We had to wait 20 minutes just for a self-check kiosk to open. Then we headed down to security and it’s looooooooooooooong line. I was kinda freaking out, because I usually like to get to security two hours before our flight, and this time we only had an hour to spare. But they opened the security area at 4AM and the line started moving fast. It still took us a half hour to shuffle through the line and through the checkpoint.

The flight home was only 40% full, so we weren’t in a hurry to get good seats. We all slept on the 2 hour flight home. We got into the Tesla (our home away from home) and headed into Alton to get something to eat. Whereas when we got home from Miami and there was nothing open to eat, this time we were too early and there was nothing open to eat. Except McDonalds. That’s how we ended our trip. Good ol’ McDonalds.