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Cimarron, NM to Denver, CO

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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. 








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