Denver, CO and the Long Drive

August 6: After getting out of the hotel, a little late, I headed back into downtown and found an all day parking lot ($5 dollars for 30 minutes, $10 dollars maximum?) right between City Hall and the Denver Mint. Then I found out that the Mint works with reservations and over the summer, these are filled up weeks in advance. I got a standby ticket (lucky 13) and came back at 11:30.

While I waited, I went looking for a zoning map. After asking in City Hall, I got sent over to the Webb building where zoning was. After a little confusion about protocol for talking to people at zoning one of the people at the desk gave me a small zoning map of the city, which was fine.

After that I went over to the City Park and took pictures of the sculptures and a nice amphitheater on one side of the park. Then I went to the Capital. Outside was a nice veterans memorial. The Capital was classic capital building architecture. Also, I didn't understand the full architecture of City Hall until I got up to the Capital and looked back. From going inside and from the side facing the Mint, it looked like a boring city hall (the side facing the mint was where prisoners were dropped off).


Inside the Capital, there were dozens of quilts for some reason I didn't quite understand. I was able to see three floors but couldn't get into the walkway around the dome or into the galleries for either the House or Senate. Oh well. It was very well kept up and very impressive. I saw people cleaning the various places and there were multiple tours going on. Lights were being set up for some video production as well.



Then it was getting towards 11:30, so I headed back, dumped my camera in the car and headed to the tour entrance with the stand-bys and those who had actual reservations. It was a nail biter. I think they let a father and daughter in after me and that was it. The tour was neat. I remember a similar tour at the Philadelphia mint, probably when I was in eight grade. They had lots of old stuff from previous methods of making, packing and shipping coins. There didn't seem to be too many people on the floor, but this was the lunch hour tour.


After the mint, I went to the art museum. I had wanted to go to the history museum, but I didn't quite know where that was, whereas the art museum was just across from the Capital. There was a great section on western art (meaning the American West) both historic and modern. In the modern section there was an odd piece called Fox Games. I also stumbled across a video piece by Bjorn Melhus called "Captain", mainly because it used sound effects, music and VO from the original Star Trek.



Here's a slideshow of the photos from my time in Denver, Colorado.

As it got to 2 PM Denver time, I checked the map and headed back out to 25N and then 70E. This was the long hall. After 7 hours and 15 minutes I made it to Salina at about 10:15 PM having traveled 488 miles. Tomorrow is another long hall, but It's broken up by a stop in Oklahoma City.

TTFN