dual personalities

…or a few more things about our recent trip West.

I have never been a big fan of large hotels, especially ones that charge you $5o a day to park in their garage–so when I was planning our trip to Denver I decided to be adventurous and try airbnb.com. I read about it on a blog of course. You can rent an apartment or a room, a treehouse or a boat. You can find a unique space in 192 countries!

We stayed in a renovated Victorian house in a hip neighborhood in Denver only minutes from the Colorado History Museum. We had a room and a bathroom (and street parking) in this lovely home owned by Jim, a friendly former Marine who has been renovating homes in this neighborhood for thirty years.

I would do it again in a minute.

Daughter #2 attributed much of our good karma to the fact that our house was on Emerson St.

We spent many hours in the Stephen Hart Library of the Colorado History Museum doing research, i.e. taking photos of each page in multiple files from 3 boxes of archives pertaining to John Simpson Hough, John Wesley Prowers and Frank Baron Hough. The staff at the library were all friendly, accommodating and helpful–like most of the people we encountered in Denver. They seemed genuinely happy that we were there visiting them.

We also went to the Denver Art Museum, which was pretty impressive.

And we squeezed in lunch with one of daughter #2’s BFFs who went to college in Colorado and never came home.

I have a whole new appreciation for how that could happen. I mean you have to love a place that has a postcard featuring “The Coat”:

And you have to love a state capitol with a statue of Kit Carson (wearing the aforementioned coat).

And what trip is complete without a picture posed in front of a cannon?

We left Denver for Wyoming after only two (very busy) days…

But I’m sure we’ll be back!