Skip to main content

Cimarron, NM to Denver, CO

Image
By

On Friday morning, we left Santa Fe and headed north to Cimarron.
Cimarron is a village in Colfax county, NM which sits on the eastern slopes of the Sangre de Cristo mountains.  We stayed in what is reputed to be one of the most haunted hotels in the USA at the St James Hotel, built in 1872. It has one room that is supposedly so spooky that it is never rented out.  Many legends of the Old West  stayed here including Buffalo Bill Cody, Jesse James, Annie Oakley and Wyatt Earp. The hotel front desk even has a list of those who were shot in the hotel. We evensaw some bullet holes in the ceiling of the bar. 

The front desk
The lobby
The following morning saw us on our way to Colorado, a journey of over 200 miles.  We drove through vast plains as we headed to Colorado Springs with the Rockies in the background. 

 On Sunday, we drove to Manitou Springs, a very attractive small town to take the cog railway to Pike's Peak. For over 100 years, this railway has been taking visitors to the summit of the Peak at 14,115 feet.  It was quite cool when we set out but as we ascended, the temperature fell to minus 13 Celsius at the summit.  Even though we were frozen, we appreciated the views which were fortunately quite clear on the day,  We were told that we could see over 200 miles in one direction, into the state of Kansas. Katherine Lee Bates, 
who was a guest lecturer at Colorado College in 1893, was so taken by the views from the 
summit that she was inspired to write the original draft of America the Beautiful.


View from summit



Well wrapped up in the cold!



We weren't  impressed by Colorado Springs - in our opinion it wasn't a very attractive city. It didn't seem to have a centre, just wide multi-laned streets traversing the city with hardly anybody out and about. 




The Pioneer Museum



 We decided to do a little retail therapy for golfing apparel but we were out of luck wherever we looked. 


Denver, known as the mile-high city is situated at the base of the majestic Rocky Mountains, whose snow-capped peaks provided a spectacular backdrop to the city. 
Denver was founded in 1858 as a gold mining camp but today it is Colorado’s sophisticated capital city with a walkable downtown centred around the 16th Street Mall, a mile long pedestrianised street filled with shops, restaurants and bars. They even have a free shuttle up and down every few minutes if you don’t want to walk.  Our hotel was very centrally located which made it easy to see the main sites on foot. 





State Capital 

Sculpture outside a municipal building 




Sculpture outside the Convention Centre

 We visited the Molly Brown House Museum. She was an American socialite and philanthropist who was perhaps best known for being a survivor of the Titanic.  

 We then walked to the Denver Art Museum (home to one of the largest Native American art collections in the USA and its Western American Art collection was well worth the visit). From the outside, the striking new wing designed by Daniel Libeskind is simply quite awesome. 



Sculpture outside museum



Relaxing outside museum
Wednesday morning saw us up bright and early as we drove to the airport to drop off our car and take a flight to San Francisco. 








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Holbrook, AZ to Peach Springs, AZ

By
We left Holbrook in bright sunshine and continued our drive along Rte 66 which once again had us driving on the Interstate at times. Our first stop was in Winslow made famous when The Eagles recorded "Take It Easy" whose second verse starts with "Standin' on a corner in Winslow Arizona". We then drove on to Flagstaff but didn't stop in the city. Flagstaff has a beautiful forested location high up on the Colorado Plateau and it was a change to be driving on roads lined with tall ponderosa pine trees. We had a picnic lunch off the beaten track in Buckskinner Park, Williams, AZ. We followed a dirt trail to the picnic area which really tested our car's tyres.  They survived, thankfully. We soon found ourselves in Seligman (pronounced Sligman), a sleepy town which maintains a lot of its historic character together with a few unexpected twists - eg Santa in a Chevvy outside the wacky Snow Cap Drive-in. Our destination for the night was th...
2 comments
Read more

Seattle, WA

By
  We left Everett on Sunday morning and headed south to Seattle, our final stop on this trip. We drove to our hotel and dropped off our cases before we headed to SeaTac to return our car.  After the brief stop at the hotel we drove to Kubota Garden, a 20-acre Japanese garden in one of Seattle’s southern neighbourhoods. It was started in 1927 by Fijitaro Kubota, a Japanese immigrant. It is an urban oasis  with Japanese and native trees and plants, ponds and waterfalls. It was beautiful with its fall colours.  The following morning we headed down to the waterfront to the historic Pike Place Market where Starbucks first opened its doors to the public in 1971.  Then we wandered through the market which opened in 1907 and strolled by the numerous stalls of seafood, fresh produce, crafts and flowers.  On Tuesday we took the monorail, which was the first commercial monorail in the USA and built in 1962 as an attraction for the 1962 World’s Fair. It still uses the ...
3 comments
Read more

Amarillo, Texas to Tucumcari, New Mexico

By
We packed up after breakfast and continued our drive through Texas. Our first stop was at a ranch. Usually one expects to see horses at a ranch but this one was home to a row of half-buried Cadillacs! It was the idea of a controversial millionaire, Stanley Marsh from Amarillo. He said he created it as tribute to the golden age of car travel!! Visitors are encouraged to leave their mark by spray painting their names, comments etc. on the cars. We soon reached Vega, another small town with lots of Rte 66 treasures including a restored 1920s Magnolia gas station and the Milburn-Price Museum in what was previously the town bus station. Miss Karen, the owner told us lots of interesting stories about the museum pieces which were all donated by local families. Outside the museum there was a beautifully restored 1923 Model T Ford. We reached Adrian, TX which marks the mid point of the Route - 1139 miles east to Chicago and 1139 miles to Santa Monica, Los Angel...
Post a Comment
Read more