Life Is A Mountain

Life is a mountain. Your job is to find your path, not to reach the top.

Maxime Lagace

Fillmore Auditorium

There’s a fantastic auditorium sign just blocks from the State Capitol building in Denver. It’s for the Fillmore Auditorium but this old building hasn’t always been an auditorium.

It actually began life as a roller rink in 1907. Since then it has been everything from an indoor ice rink to a flea market and even a car factory.

It was repurposed over twenty years ago, redesigned inside to replicate the famous Fillmore in San Francisco. It’s now a popular live music venue. While I haven’t been inside, I was infatuated with the exterior as we sat in traffic inching down the street. Consequently, they aren’t the best pictures but you get the gist.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll catch a show there sometime and report back on the adventure.

Denver Botanic Gardens

Denver is a fantastic place to visit in the fall. The weather was in the mid to low sixties the entire visit and the sky was mostly a beautiful light blue. The wind was lively at times, causing leaves to swirl through the air and pile up along the city streets.

In fact, within an hour of our arrival I had learned the true merit of the phrase “hold onto your hat” as I held tightly to my hat and scarf while we scurried down the street. However, the wind calmed and left us with perfect weather for outdoor fun most of the time.

We ended our vacation on a gorgeous day at the Denver Botanic Gardens, stopping here for a few hours before my friend dropped me at the airport and began her drive home. The 23-acre property is located in the Cheesman Park neighborhood and was the perfect ending to our trip.

They have been busy winterizing the grounds and preparing for their Christmas lights event but there was still plenty to see and trails to walk. The property is nicely accessible to all with sidewalks that provide ease of use for strollers, wheelchairs and anyone with balance issues. However, there are also non-paved trails that meander hither and yon through wooded areas and past water features as well.

There are a lot of Asian influences that provide calm and quiet.

An indoor tropical space features a treehouse style observation deck and a large selection of mature plants.

They also have some nice art including this Dale Chihuly piece. It’s similar to others I have seen in the collections at Franklin Park Conservatory in Columbus and the Phipps Conservatory and Gardens in Pittsburgh.

We walked several miles here but I know we didn’t see everything. What I wouldn’t give to go back for their Blossoms of Light exhibit this year.

Here’s one last picture. I was obsessed with this scene and envious of the people who live in this apartment building. What a view they must have from up there!

Want to visit Denver Botanic Gardens or learn more? Click here to visit their website!

Denver Mural

Denver has a vibrant arts scene and is teeming with murals. Some are elaborate, amazing works of art that are easily viewed from afar while others are tucked away in alleys and other right spaces. I mostly just enjoyed them from the car window but snapped a few pictures.

Here’s one I especially liked.

The colors really popped against the glass and steel buildings and the grey morning sky.

Public art, especially the well done kind, is one of my favorite things to look for when I travel.

Davie’s Chuck Wagon Diner

As we approached Davie’s Chuck Wagon Diner, I reminded Johnna that I wanted to eat there for the atmosphere and offered to buy her lunch if our breakfast was terrible.

Honestly, I really just wanted to see the sign and figured it was worth the visit if the food was at all decent. There was no need to worry as the quality of the food and service surpassed even the fabulous atmosphere of this 1957 era diner.

It’s a prefab diner, manufactured in New Jersey and shipped by train to its home here on Denver’s Colfax Ave. Weighing in at 46 tons, transporting these old diners and placing them on their foundations was no small task.

Look at that sign.

Tabletop juke boxes, gorgeous tile work and a counter full of regulars make for great atmosphere. The menu features your traditional diner fare and our waitress was amazing. We hardly waited five minutes before she returned with our steaming hot breakfast plates. I had a veggie omelette, hash browns and sourdough toast and it was all delicious.

Check out these horse tiles.

And the pink tile ladies room.

And the regulars at the counter!

Davie’s Chuck Wagon Diner is well worth a visit if you enjoy diners and vintage okaces. Find the location, hours and menu at their website by clicking here!

Western Adventure, Year Four

For the last four years, my friend Johnna and I have met somewhere within driving distance of her Wyoming home for a girl’s trip. I look forward to it because it provides much needed time with my friend and because we go places I wouldn’t likely visit on my own.

We met in Denver last week, each of us with a wish list of things to do. We accomplished almost everything we hoped for and a couple of extra things too.

On this trip, we stumbled into some great places to eat and shopped a good bit because it got dark so early. We visited the Colorado State House, Molly Brown House, Stanley Hotel, Botanic Gardens and the Garden of the Gods.

We wandered far and wide, sometimes aimlessly and often with purpose. It was magnificent. All of it.

Denver weather was mostly pleasant at a moderate upper sixties with beautiful blue skies most of the time. Of course, the wind was so strong for a couple of days that it would knock you over and that only worsened during our drive up to Estes Park. The wind was so bad I told Johnna that if you tied a helium balloon to a small child they would float away.

I came home with a phone full of pictures and a ton of memories to share with you. I’ll follow my usual pattern, sharing some in the next few days and then start weaving them in with other stories from other places over the next several weeks.

I can’t wait to show you some of this stuff and I’m hoping you enjoy the armchair journey as well. Come back tomorrow. We will visit my favorite new diner!