Two Days in Denver

The past two days, we have been sleeping well in a suburb just north of the Mile High City. We started out this part of our trip in Cheyenne, Wyoming, home of, well honestly, not a whole lot. We woke up from our hotel and headed downtown to the capital building, where we toured the state museum, and then immediately after took a bit of a break by playing a pick up game of football on the Wyoming Supreme Court side lawn. I’m sure they were thrilled to look out their windows and see that, but we didn’t get yelled at, so that’s all that matters. We then packed up and headed south to Colorado, and more specifically,
Denver.

We had it planned out so that upon arriving in downtown, we would purchase tickets and watch the Colorado Rockies take on the Los Angeles Dodgers. It was a great day for baseball, clear skies and a light breeze. Most of us took part in trying some of the beautiful parks food and drinks, including foot long bratwurst with all the fixings, strawberry smoothies, and for the 21 and over crowd, ice cold beer. It was a great game, but in the end, the Dodgers came out on top, 8-6. Our next course of action was to find out where we would be lodging for the night, which we were expecting to pay much over our budget to stay anywhere reasonably close, but boy were we wrong.

One of the students on the trip called into a La Quinta Hotel in a nearby northern suburb here in Denver, just 15-20 minutes out. We couldn’t believe the price, an amazing $55 a night, or about $15 under our nightly budget. Enough of the boring stuff… After we dropped off our luggage, we headed back downtown for dinner at a local pub like restaurant. It was some of the best food I have eaten yet. The place was called, well I honestly don’t remember, but it was delicious to say the least. We ate there not only for the great food and atmosphere, but we also wanted to watch the Denver Nuggets take on the Lakers with many other Denver faithful. Even though they also ended up losing that night, it was still a great time. We hung around for a bit and played some pool and shuffleboard, and then we headed out to explore downtown. The rest is not important so I’ll skip ahead to the part where we called it a night and headed back to the hotel.

We woke up this morning and our first item of business was to tour the NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) Building in Boulder, just 25 minutes away from Denver. The building itself is situated up high in the hills, right below the mountain line in Boulder. The county itself has a ban on any development in the mountains, but NCAR got an exception and the world famous I.M. Pei designed and built this artistic masterpiece of a research facility. We went on a one hour tour of the building and met some more people that were visiting from Indiana, again very close to me, as I had gone to school with the guy at one point, and he now goes to Purdue. Anyway, other that random run in, number two thus far, we then roamed freely for a while, seeing their tornado machine in the lobby, and going out back on their nature trail. It was a very enjoyable experience.

After we left NCAR, we headed back down the mountain to downtown Boulder. We passed by Colorado University, which had many unique looking buildings, compared to what we are used to in Indiana. The campus itself also appears to be quite large compared to Ball State standards. When we finally found a spot to park, we followed the lead of Dr. Call and Reuben as they led us to an eatery that I would never have tried if I were in Colorado alone. They led us down a set of stairs from the street and into the Himalayas Restaurant. It specialized in Nepali, Indian and Tibetan cuisine. I can’t say that I remember eating any of these in my recent memory. The buffet was all that was available and at first glance, I will honestly say that the food did not look appeasing to me. After taking a few bites of some chicken and rice, and following that with potatoes and fresh vegetables, I was pleased. No, its not my cup of tea for food choices, but I’m always willing to try new things, and this trip makes these opportunities possible. Unfortunately the food came back to bite me this evening, and that is all I will say.

We left Boulder and headed to Golden, about another 15 minutes away, which if you are the expert on Colorado, you would now that the Coors Brewery makes its home in the Golden Colorado Valley. At first we were just going to drive through town and past the brewery itself, but what is the fun in that? We hopped on a Coors bus and took a self-audio tour of one of the largest breweries in the world. It was very interesting and educating in the hour or so that we spent inside the Rocky Mountain brewery. At the end, all of the students that are 21 and up got to taste and drink 3 choices of beer, while I on the other hand had my fair share of root beer. We left Golden and headed back in the direction of our hotel for dinner, which ended up being either Wendy’s or Boston Market, students and professors choice. After dinner, we headed back to our hotel and played a quick game of football in a neighboring parking lot. In a quick recap, team awesome possum went up 20-6 before the sun started to set, and then who know what happened, but team sea bass came back with a miracle win, 21-20, in a game we played to twenty one. It was a disappointing defeat, but it was good to bond with the other guys, girls and even the professors.

Then, the ever popular “SEE TEXT” marker popped up on the Storm Prediction Center’s website this evening. There were different factors that were all pointing to some possibly chase able weather. We had an emergency meeting to discuss what our plan of action will be for tomorrow. The vote was unanimous that we will leave here at 6am and head as quickly as is safe to central Nebraska, in an attempt to intercept and chase anything that may pop up. Just recently, we checked the SPC website again, and they now have the area over a slight risk, which is very good and some of the best chances we have seen out here yet for chase conditions. As the details they have say, we could be in for our first supercells, and low-precipitation at that, making them all the more photogenic. We are feeling really good about our chances with the conditions tomorrow, especially since we have been sightseers the past three days. This is where I will leave you for tonight, from the third floor of the La Quinta, north of Denver. Tomorrow is looking to be a long, but exciting day. Hopefully I will have some great stuff to talk about and awesome pictures to share with you. Any comments or suggestions are always great, and as always, thank you for reading!