I thought about not writing this blogpost because it happened so long ago, but here I am, typing away, and it’s only because of this little chipmunk.
We encountered him on a hike in Colorado’s Chautaugua Park, but more on that later.
Many moons ago, my good friend and adventure buddy Taylor called me and asked me if I wanted to go to Colorado with her. Minutes later, we’d booked flights for a three-day weekend in Denver. It was shortly after my Everest trip was halted in it’s tracks, and I was excited to find a new adventure.
So early on a Saturday, we flew to Colorado, picked up our rental car, and hit the road toward Boulder. We’d initially wanted to take a drive on one of Colorado’s highest paved roads, but we were informed that it was closed due to snow in the mountains, so we changed plans and headed to Chautaugua Park, which has a sweet arch that we wanted to check out.
We hiked somewhere near the top of that!
I thought it was a challenging hike, but it was absolutely stunning.
It was a cool mixture of rocky terrain and hiking through beautiful, tall trees.
That’s my jam. Our altitude gain during the hike was 1400 feet; it was definitely a challenge, but worth the views at the top. I liked the super rocky trails – and the views were pretty nifty, too.
There was one spot where there was a set of stairs surrounded by rock that was so surreal to look at, because it looked like you should slide off the side of the mountain – to our left there were no trees obscuring our vision, it was all straight mount side and blue skies.
If you look closely, you can see the set of stairs to the very right-hand side of the photo.
When we finally made it to the top, our destination was backlit by the sun.
It was super cool, and had great views of Boulder below, but it was pretty crowded.
We came during a holiday weekend, so part of me wonders if it would have been less crowded on a different weekend or during a weekday.
There was a large slab of rock at the top of the arch, in which people were sitting, taking in the views. We waited around the edge of the rock for awhile, hoping to get our turn to check out the view, but never got a chance, because there was a group of very annoying individuals there. To sum them up without giving any descriptions of them, here’s the anecdote that made me want to write this blogpost.
As we waited, a tiny, adorable chipmunk popped its head up between a pair of rocks. Being a cute, confident creature, it scurried over to where we were standing, on the other side of the rock that the annoying group of people were seated on. One of them began to freak out at the sight of the adorable chipmunk, saying it was “gross,” so her companion asked if she wanted to leave to get brunch, and she said, “No, I just lost my appetite.”
This chipmunk. This ADORABLE chipmunk made her so sick to her stomach that she felt she could no longer have brunch.
I half-expected this adorable chipmunk to stand up and starting singing a song. For the rest of the trip, and several times since, Taylor and I have laughed about this cute little chipmunk and that lady’s overdramatic line.
We took a few more minutes to look at the view, which included this cute little tree growing out of a crack in the arch.
You’re doing great, buddy.
I took a photo of the arch from a different perspective in an attempt to get rid of the other tourists there.
And with that, we made our way to the bottom.
This was a staged photo, I can’t even lie. We didn’t even climb up those stairs. They lead to another trail that we didn’t even hike. This blog sits on a throne of lies!
Anyway.
The park was stunning! We were starving afterward, so we headed into Boulder, which I loved.
The town was just really cute, with awesome views of mountains peeking through every street, and it had lots of fun little shops downtown. We found a taco place and enjoyed a late lunch before perusing the streets of Boulder, and eventually making our way to our AirBNB, which was located just outside of Denver.
I didn’t take many photos of the actual AirBNB, but it did have a pretty sweet view of the mountains.
The following day, Taylor and I parted ways for the morning and afternoon; she headed into the mountains to visit a friend and I headed into Denver to explore the city. I started at the Museum of Contemporary Art, as one does, and checked out their exhibits. They had a lot of really interesting stuff, including a tattoo gallery, which was so awesome!
It was a super unique concept to me – I definitely consider tattoos to be artwork, but the way they framed the gallery and her vision for her art was presented in a very interesting way.
Amanda Wachob, the artist in the exhibit, used tattoo ink not only on human skin, but also on canvas and other surfaces for the gallery. She was the originator of the watercolor tattoo, and began experimenting in that style.
There were a lot of beautiful examples of her work. It’s crazy how much it looks like someone straight-up painted these people with watercolors! The talent behind that artistic work is intense.
The other piece that caught my eye was a portrait on their lower level.
What you’re seeing is hundreds of layers of paint. The artist painted layer over layer of paint, before strategically chipping away at circular bits of it and drilling down into the layers of paint to reveal new colors, until it arranged in the image you see above. I don’t even understand how one begins to plan and orchestrate a piece of art like that. It’s beautiful.
My next stop was Union Station.
It was around lunchtime, so I decided to walk there in hopes that I’d find a restaurant along the way, but I ended up grabbing a sandwich at a little shop inside. The building was super cool and extremely well-maintained. Inside were lots of tables and booths for people to hang out at, and there were several shops and restaurants for people to grab food or do some light shopping.
I was really drawn to the chandeliers and light fixtures throughout the building – they were elegant. The chandeliers lit up the room in a row down the center, and matched the light fixtures around each column.
I hung out in the building for awhile – it was the kind of place I could have imagined myself going to write, had I lived in Denver, with the exception of the fact that it seemed a bit touristy to me. The building itself was lovely, but there was a lot going on!
On my way to Union Station, I’d walked by an old bookstore that I’d wanted to check out, but my hanger was getting the best of me. So, after finishing my sandwich I ventured back out to the Tattered Cover Bookstore, where I found a beautiful copy of The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald, my favorite author of all time ever.
It was a really cool old building, and they had a wide variety of books. If there were more room in my suitcase, I might have been in trouble…
My next little adventure brought me to another one of my life’s fascinations. Like many, I’ve always been drawn to the Titanic disaster, so when I learned that Denver was home to one of the survivors of the tragedy, I knew I had to go there. It had begun to rain a little, so I called an Uber and went toward the Molly Brown House Museum.
First of all, the house was beautiful.
I love old houses, the Titanic, and museums, so this was a great time for me. I bought a ticket for the next tour, which was about an hour away from when I’d gotten there, so I watched a movie in the lower level of the home, perused the gift shop, and ended up reading the copy of The Beautiful and the Damned that I’d just purchased, leaning against a pillar of the home. The rain had subsided, so it was kind of nice to just hang out on the front porch and read for awhile.
Secondly, Molly Brown was a badass.
This is a direct quote from her: “I am a daughter of adventure.”
I saw this quote when I walked into the basement to watch the short film they had on her, and immediately knew this was my kind of lady. We’re definitely kindred spirits.
Not only did she survive the Titanic, but she ran for Senate in 1901. 1901, ladies and gentleman, a time in which women did not run for Senate. Later in life, she went on to run for Congress, as well, which is incredible.
During the Titanic tragedy, she helped people into boats until she was forced into one herself, and upon rescue, she comforted other passengers who didn’t speak English, because she was very well-educated and spoke a variety of other languages. She also volleyed for the poorer passengers who’d lost everything in the disaster by raising money from first class passengers on the ship.
After my hour of waiting had passed, we began the tour! The home was very cool – my favorite rooms were the library and the dining room. The library was brimming with books, and the dining room had a sweet ceiling that Molly had painted to make the room feel more like it was outdoors or in an arboretum.
It was pretty cool! Throughout the tour, our guides talked about how haunted the home was. They didn’t think the ghost of Molly had stuck around (presumably she had more adventures to tend to), but they did believe that the ghosts of some of her relatives, as well as other visitors were haunting the home. As we got to the top floor, the fire alarms began to go off. We had to evacuate into the rain, which had returned, and wait until the firefighters gave us the all clear. The tour guides told us that the ghosts had been particularly active that day, and they sometimes felt that the ghosts set off the alarms when they wanted the visitors to leave. Our tour was cut a little short because of the delay, but it was still neat to see.
Later that evening, Taylor and I met with her friend to check out a country bar called the Grizzy Rose, and it was so. much. fun.
They had line dancing and swing dancing, and it was literally a scene out of Footloose. It was so cool, and we had a blast dancing the night away!
On our last day of the trip, we visited the Indian Hot Springs just outside of Denver. They didn’t allow photography in many areas of the natural hot springs, but we did snag a photo in one of the public hot springs, that was really cool.
They had plants everywhere, and the water was super relaxing. The private hot springs that we visited were in a dark cave, and it was like walking into a super intense sauna. They had individual pools that people could go into, about the size of a large bathtub, that were extremely hot. The thick heat of the caves permeated the air, and actually reminded me of a Native American Sweat Lodge I’d experienced while I was in college. The heat was pretty intense, but relaxing, and we had to take a few breaks so we could breathe a littler easier in the cooler air.
We’d had a lot of discussion about Coors beer while on our trip, as the factory was nearby, and Taylor is a fan of the beer. Since we were close to it, we drove there to try to get a tour before leaving Colorado, but it was unfortunately closed because of the holiday, so we drove to a local bar to get a Coors, which I had never tried. Here is photographic evidence of my reaction and feelings about it.
It was fine.
I wasn’t blown away, but I didn’t hate it either! It was just ok.
We strolled around town for awhile, posing like statues on the street and looking into random shops.
You know, as people do.
Finally, it was time for us to head to the airport, where we enjoyed the fruits of my travel-hacking labors, and had an awesome dinner at the Denver Airport. Part of my Priority Pass perks include a voucher to the Timberline Steak Restaurant, where we had a delicious dinner, champagne, and lemon chiffon cake for free!
We took the lemon chiffon cake for the sky, thinking it would be a nice snack on the plane.
However, we had crazy turbulence for the entire flight, which did not make me hungry for anything, even lemon chiffon cake. I kind of felt the same way that lady did when she saw the chipmunk.
The lemon chiffon cake was a great post-turbulent flight snack, though!
And that was our trip to Denver. We checked all of our boxes, and had a fun, semi-spontaneous weekend.
Very shortly afterward, I embarked on a silent retreat in Isanti, Minnesota. Stay tuned for a post about that experience, coming soon!
Want to read more about my 25 Things list? Click here for more adventures.
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