COLORADO ADVENTURE FEBRUARY 2004 (Part 4)

   

  

Of course one of the most interesting tourist attractions in the Denver area, is, of course, the Rocky Moutains. But time constraints, (and this really only was a trip to "meet the folks" and friends), and the fact that the rental car would never had made it into the real moutains (!) meant we spent our time skirting around the foothills. But what bloody big foothills! It sort of unnerving when you get to the base of the foothills and you see this kind of sign:

And believe you me - watch out for rocks I did! Thankfully we spared any landslides. Lets be honest, you really wouldn't want any of this falling on you, would you?










So, off we went up into the foothills. We were heading off to a particular tourist attraction, which I shall talk about and show you in a minute. But on the way we stumbled across something which has always amused me about a certain aspect of the American education system. Now, this may seem perfectly normal to you guys across the pond, as it were, but the whole idea of fraternity houses on campus' always seemed a little weird to me. And after my limited contact, (movies, Paul Wittemann :), and  my lovely wife, Sue), with the whole concept of these fraternity 'things', it was a nice surprise to stumble across: 

























The Colorado School of Mines! As part of my civic duty to those parents reading this webpage whose sons & daughters may be attending the CSM, I felt you should know where your money is being spent. Remember when little Johnny asked for some more money because his cruel landlord was threatening to evict him? Rubbish! Little Johnny is shacked up in one of these splendid looking fraternity houses! These things were little palaces, as you can see :) (I'm sure the security tapes have been looked at by now, and they'll have traced the rental car back to the airport. Even I'll admit it did look kinda dodgey driving through the campus taking photos :) ).

But, anyway, the CSM was only on the way to our original tourist destination. Somewhere up Lookout Mountain is:

Yes, it is. At approx. 7400ft above sea level is the grave of one of the most famous western characters:
William Frederick Cody - more famously known as "Buffalo Bill".

The building in the far distance at the entrance to this mountain pass is the main building of the COORS beer plant. The town that spreads out alongside it, and in front of it, is the historic western town of Golden.













Halfway up the windy mountain road we stopped to take a self portrait ...lol...
 














And from the top of Lookout Mountain you can get a fantastic panoramic look back at wonderful smogbound downtown Denver :)







But, of course, the whole reason why we were there was to see the grave of the famous guy himself - Buffalo Bill:


Now, I DO have an idea why I was laughing when I took another self-portrait of myself. Because there was no-one else around, I'd just phoned my brother Chris back in England, and told him I had just danced a jig around Buffalo Bill's grave whilst I was on the phone to him....lol....!







This was an arty shot. I had to lay flat on the ground to get this. This was to show, again, that even though it was really warm that day, there was still snow & ice on the ground.

And, in a bizarre kind of way, there would have been only me & Bill who could view his grave from that level :) - unless, of course, some other strange person got on the ground to take this kind of photo!





Here we are with a more subdued stance.










And there are times when you know you are about to take a great photo, and this was one of them.
The access to the grave area was from the side steps of this platormed area, not from the main steps you see in front of you. As we walked back around from the side to leave, I turned around when I was directly in front of the grave to have a last look back.
There, in front of me, captured between those two trees was the perfectly framed shot. The colours, the contrasts, the shapes - absolutely perfect. And the whole isolationist feeling of this grave all by itself on top of a mountain is also captured there.

Yup - it's one of my best.

Following all this exhaustive driving up mountains and furious photographing everywhere we stopped for a break before setting off further into the Rockies.......

.....of course....you'll have to follow the instructions below if you want to find out what we did! :)