Day 1: Saturday
There’s never enough time to do everything you want to do in and around Denver. Even if you had a week here, you wouldn’t be able to scratch the surface (especially when you’re traveling with kids). We only had a day this time, so it was impossible to cover all the possibilities we had noted. But we still managed to pack a lot in.
We started the morning at Red Rocks. We weren’t there for a concert, unfortunately, but the amphitheater was lit up spectacularly in the morning sun. Even the dozens of fitness junkies who were there literally Zumba-ing and crosstraining their asses off didn’t detract from the sheer magnificence of the perfectly diagonal rock formations that surround you in all directions. It’s one of the few places in the U.S. that have made me mutter under my breath “Is this real life?”
After lunch we hit the RiNo arts district, which has become a cultural hub in Denver (especially for music, food, and visual arts). Honestly, what drew us there were a bunch of street-art murals we wanted to see for ourselves up close. But when you’re there wandering the streets and alleys, you feel the atmosphere palpably shift. It’s a drastic difference from the long strip of familiar samecore stores in the downtown shopping district. RiNo is part Portland, part Nashville, and part Austin. It’s *weird*, and everyone who’s there knows that and embraces it without being too hipster-pretentious about it. It feels real and vivid and alive.
After RiNo, we hit the largest comics shop in the world. I shouldn’t say “shop,” because Mile High Comics is basically a huge warehouse plopped down in the middle of one of the sketchiest neighborhoods in Denver. But holy shit, if you love comics and/or pop culture, you have to make the pilgrimage to Mile High when you’re in the area. It’s a surreal explosion of comics, toys, wall art, statues, junk, and several decades’ worth of sprawling stories. I think the kids loved it, but it’s such a sensory overload that it’s hard to process or express it at that age.
Grant saw a cat wandering the back of Mile High and followed it around, worried that the owner might not know he had a feline visitor in the store. So he made sure we told the guys at the register, and they reassured him that Cambridge was indeed a welcome resident. Anyway, Grant managed to pet the cat, and that was probably his favorite part of Mile High Comics.
People in Denver seem to value two things above all others: their bikes and their dogs. But after that, what they seem to love best is their beer. You can hardly drive a few miles without seeing a brewery or a pub or a tap house somewhere in view. We avoided most of the big breweries on our Denver day (because again: kids), but we did manage to hit a couple small ones south of the city. It was a little weird that these places weren’t packed on a Saturday evening, but honestly that’s kind of what we were looking for. We appreciated that there weren’t throngs of tourists, but instead mostly locals sitting around talking and trying out new beers made in-house. You can’t find most of this stuff in grocery stores outside of Colorado. You have to be here to find and taste it. Besides the unique and experimental flavors, that’s a big part of the appeal. And it was a great way to close out the day.
Obviously, I wish we'd had more time here. Denver is a strange, beautiful city sprawled out along the foot of the Rocky Mountains, and it has a plethora of tastes and sights and experiences to offer. We’d absolutely love to stay in a cabin and go fly fishing and hike the surrounding mountains and visit towns like Golden and show the kids Garden of the Gods. But we're headed to Utah tomorrow, so all of that will have to wait until another time. We did a lot on our first day. The kids keep asking when we’re coming back, so I'll take that as a good sign. Next time we’ll peel back more layers of a city we all really like.
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