Destination: Colorado, August 2024

Posted on Aug 15, 2024

Table of contents:

TL;DR

Some words about our trip to Colorado in August 2024…

2024-08-06 / Day One: Denver, Colorado

Walker, Olive, and I hopped on a plane and flew to Denver, CO on August 6th. We picked up the rental car, a Cadillac something or other, and we headed into Denver to drop off our bags at the Flora House. This place is highly recommended, just an awesome old house.

After check-in, we made our way to the Denver Art Museum where we meandered about for a couple of hours, fantastic architecture and all types of art/exhibits to ponder over and enjoy, would go back.

The 98 degree temperature wasn’t doing much for us afterwards after traveling/driving/walking, so we ended up back at the room and door-dashed some Cheeba Hut subs for dinner, and a rice-krispie/chocolate/peanut butter dessert called a Goo Ball, it was fantastic. And one of the best subs I’ve had.

2024-08-07 / Day Two: Denver, Colorado

We woke up and Olive bee-lined straight for the hot tub, where she spent the next three hours while Walker and I had coffee and snacks in the shade of the garden.

After breakfast, we ventured out to second breakfast at the Fox Run Cafe, man oh man how good. The griddled banana bread was … I’m still thinking about it 9 days later.

After that we made our way to Meow Wolf Denver, and I don’t even have the vocabulary to describe what an experience this was. I loved it, Olive loved it, weird and awesome.

Post Meow Wolf, we went for coffee, then off to Whole Foods for some groceries, and then headed for the mountains for the rest of the adventure in Black Hawk.

2024-08-07 / Day Two: Black Hawk, Colorado

We arrived at the cabin about 5:00pm and… not going to lie… we were giddy as soon as we saw it:

This is pretty much my dream scenario: cabin, mountains, trees, stream, quiet. My blood pressure dropped about 30 points instantly. Beers were opened, car was unpacked, and honestly felt so lucky that we were going to call this home for a few days.

We spent the night moving in so to speak, listening to music, and soaking in the 60 degree temps, with a side of feeling out-of-shape in the thin mountain air ;)

While Walker and I made dinner, Olive grabbed a blanket and a book, parked herself outside and read. I LOVED seeing her like this, at peace with the world.

2024-08-08 / Day Three: Black Hawk, Colorado

It felt like the sun came up at 5:00am, maybe the fact that I’m usually at the far west end of Central time, and now we were in Mountain time, but whatever, we were in the mountains and it felt like day one of vacation.

We had snagged some beans from the coffee shop we went to the day before, so that was priority one. Olive and I put on our boots and wandered down the back hill to the stream. I don’t think I’ve explored a “real” stream since the Horse Cove camping trips in the Nantahala National Forest… years.

After getting our feet wet, and me messing around with some pics from the iphone, we dried off and lit up the bonfire pit to warm up.

After fueling up with some breakfast, we made our way to a trail the hosts told us about. About 100 feet in we saw this tree with bear claw marks about 8 feet up! Should we just turn around? Buy some bear spray? I wasn’t feeling particularly delicious so we just kept going with our heads on a swivel.

We walked for awhile, Olive collected “gold” in the rocks she saw, and wanted to climb everything. Walker and I complained about how old and out of shape we are while enjoying the spectacular mountain scenery.

We met an older couple hiking down the trail who told us that we HAD to go visit the Carousel of Happiness in Nederland. They also told us the wild raspberries we saw were edible, and hearing that we became foragers.