Listing Through Life

Colorado-Style Pizza

Posted on September 16, 2017 by Roger

We’ve been disappointed with the pizza in Colorado. They understand the basic concept —get a circular piece of dough and put stuff on it. But good pizza is much more than that. The sauce out here has no zestiness. It’s little more than tomato sauce. A coworker who used to live near New York and understands my complaint about Colorado pizza told me a story. A guy moved out here from the east and opened a place that made good pizza. The locals complained that the sauce was too spicy.

It was with a certain degree of skepticism that we tried Beau Jo’s Pizza. There are several locations, but we visited the one in Evergreen. The pizza came in “mountain” and “prairie,” depending on the thickness of the crust. We went with mountain, of course.

There is a lot of crust. It’s a bit greasy, but tasty. And the rest of the pizza wasn’t bad. It wasn’t up to Chicago standards, but we liked it.

We asked our waiter what made it Colorado-style. He didn’t know. He thought it might be the fact that you’re supposed to dip the huge chunk of end dough in honey. He was from Minnesota, and he thought this was weird. My wife tried it. She likes honey, and she thought it was weird. So skip the honey and just enjoy it for what it is — good pizza by Colorado standards.

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Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave

Posted on September 16, 2017 by Roger

I never intended to make a special trip to visit this museum dedicated to the life and career of Buffalo Bill Cody, but I knew it was there and figured I’d be in the neighborhood some day. That day turned out to be on our way home from RMNP.

Cody requested to be buried on Lookout Mountain, above Denver. What you can look out on from the mountain, we don’t know because, when we arrived, it looked like this.

I won’t go into details about Buffalo Bill. The museum was much better than I’d expected. Most of the collection came from an associate named Johnny Baker. When Cody’s own son died, he semi-adopted Baker, teaching him how to ride and shoot. Baker later became a headliner in Buffalo Bill’s tent shows and, when Cody died, his chief memorialist.

Items belonging to Sitting Bull who toured with Buffalo Bill for a few months. The museum made a determined effort to appeal to the politically correct. Yes, Cody killed buffalo, but not THAT many. The species decline was due to the market hunters. Yes, Cody killed Indians, and even scalped one of them. But he fought for Indian rights, and they admired him and were happy to appear in his shows.

I sat on a plastic horse and tried to rope a plastic calf, but after three failed attempts, I settled for my horse’s plastic ear.

We could see if Buffalo Bill ever put on a show in our town. The woman at the front desk pushed this as a very cool and exciting thing to discover.

The grave was just a short walk behind the gift shop. The fog had cleared, but from the grave, the view was hidden by trees and a cell tower.

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Berthoud Pass

Posted on September 16, 2017 by Roger

We woke up to a steady rain on Saturday morning. After breakfast in the hotel in Winter Park, we headed south. We could see high mountains covered with snow in the distance. As the road climbed, the rain turned to thick fog. At times, ghosts of nearby mountains would show through for a second, then disappear. We kept climbing and soon found ourselves above the clouds. It was spectacularly beautiful, and I’d like to take credit for knowing it was there. But I didn’t. I just took the shortest route from Winter Park to I-70. Turns out we were driving through Berthoud Pass, which tops out at 11,307 feet and is a major avalanche area.

The south side was clearer and drier, but no less spectacular. Unfortunately, a slow-moving pickup pulled off the shoulder in front of me and sprayed my windshield with muck the whole way down, so my photos aren’t great.

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Winter Park

Posted on September 15, 2017 by Roger

After touring Rocky Mountain National Park, we drove south past Grand, Shadow Mountain, and Granby Lakes and stopped for the night in Winter Park. After mediocre BBQ at a restaurant across from our mediocre hotel, I wandered a trail behind the town.

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Rocky Mountain National Park — Moose

Posted on September 15, 2017 by Roger

As we were getting out of our car at Holzwarth Historic Site, a kind man with a British accent pulled up in his SUV and informed us that family of moose were grazing in the meadow along the Colorado River.

We spotted the cow from a long way off. It didn’t move as we continued along the trail. We walked a short way down a side trail and got a great view from about 30 yards away.

There was another couple at the spot when we arrived. I asked if they had seen the bull, and they hadn’t. They didn’t even know it was in the area. We walked another 10 yards down the trail after they left. I looked toward an aspen grove to the north and saw this. I’m not sure how they missed it.

We watched enthralled for about three minutes. These photos don’t begin to capture the immensity and grandeur of this amazing beast. It was huge and it was awesome. As we watched, it got up, stood for a few seconds, then wandered back into the trees and disappeared. We were almost giddy with the thrill of what we’d just seen. I realized later, when I watched the video, that it probably left because of us, which makes me feel bad. I think I can see when it caught our scent. It then lifted its head and saw us, and then get up and left. I’m sure we were too close, but in the awe of the moment, we were just entranced.

We toured the area around the buildings, then headed back toward the parking lot. A few more people were around, and they were looking at the cow. Except we soon figured out it wasn’t the cow — she was down a ways, closer to the river. What we were seeing was the calf.