Listing Through Life

We ate lunch in downtown Denver, at the Buckhorn Exchange, the oldest restaurant in the city. It was opened in 1893 by Henry “Shorty Scout” Zietz, one of Buffalo Bill’s band of scouts. 

The walls are covered with mounted animals heads and birds and photos of celebrities who have eaten there. These include five presidents, Princess Anne, two astronauts, actors, and Buffalo Bill himself. And now us.

The upstairs features a bar built in 1857 and a lounge.

Our table was an old poker table brought over from Germany over 160 years ago. We both ordered steaks and baked potatoes.

They were delicious, as was the Dutch apple pie with ice cream and cinnamon rum sauce that we split (although a little less sauce would have been OK).

To sum up, it was an awesome place with awesome food. If we find ourselves in Denver around lunch again, we’ll be back.

We drove to Denver to tour the U.S. Mint. The tickets are first-come-first-serve. We arrived at 9:30 and got tickets for the 11:00 tour. But since it took a half hour to get everyone through the metal detectors, we only had an hour to wait. We hung out in the gift shop without buying anything, then walked around to look at the front of the building.

And we wondered what to do about our car. I’d parked in a lot a block away. I knew the tour was only 45 minutes long, so I paid for two hours of parking. But when we discovered which tour we’d be on, we realized we’d get back to the car 20 minutes late. We decided to risk it. (Our car was there when we returned, with no tickets or anything, so I guess we got a free 20 minutes.)

We were the fourth and fifth people through the metal detectors. We entered a room with several random displays where we were asked to wait until our tour began. There were displays on jewelry made from money, on different types of purses, on piggy banks. There was a little on the history of money, but it was all rather odd.

We weren’t allowed to take photos, which is a bit weird since you can go online and see photos of much more than we were shown.

A guy with a polished routine led our tour. He led us into a room with displays and artifacts from the mint. He explained the process and showed us some die and coils of metal and leftover bits. One wall was glass and looked out over one of the production rooms. There were several blue machines that, we were told, were used to mint coins. None of them was operating, and there were no people around. Right up next to the window there was a conveyor belt of trays that contained pennies, but I’m pretty sure they just run that for the tour groups so everyone can say they saw pennies being made.

The guide explained that the mint loses money making pennies and nickels but makes money on other coins and commemoratives — enough so that they make a profit of $35 million, or something like that.

We were then ushered into another room that was basically a commercial for the mint. The displays — and the talk — was about all the things that were available in the print shop. This room had two glass walls that gave us a view down into another room of blue machines that weren’t operating. We saw two employees, but they were just talking to each other. It was all a little dull.

In a corner there was a display about a mint employee from the 1920’s. He had a wooden leg, and over the course of several years, he sneaked out a couple hundred gold bars in his … coat pocket.

The tour ended in the original mint building. The architecture was impressive and ornate. We saw an armored sentry box where a guard used to sit with guns and tear gas. But there’s never been an attempted robbery there, or at any of the other mints.

And that was it. Interesting, but not thrilling. I’m glad it was free.

Spencer Penrose made millions in mining. He invested in the Colorado Springs area — the Broadmoor Resort was his most notable achievement. He sponsored the first race up Pikes Peak, and the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo is his creation.

He also built a tower on the side of Cheyenne Mountain and named it for his friend, Will Rogers, who died in a plane crash in 1935 while the tower was being built. It’s called the Shrine of the Sun because, for a few seconds every morning, the sun catches it just as it rises in the east and lights it up in a spectacular way.

Our admission to the zoo gained us access to the tower. We were let in through the front gate of the zoo itself and drove through the crowd, hazards flashing, at five mph. The road then curled up the side of the mountain for a mile or so to a parking lot by the tower.

We climbed to the top, stopping at little rooms along the way. The first floor room had a mural of local history.

The rest of the rooms had photos of Will Rogers arranged in no particular order.

The stairway was crowded, but everyone else cleared out shortly after we got up top. The views were spectacular.

Pikes Peak

Looking north along the Rampart Range. Pikes Peak is on the left. Garden of the Gods is in the hazy distance on the right. The road up to the tower can be seen in the foreground.

The Cheyenne Mountain Zoo

The Broadmoor Resort

Downtown Colorado Springs

Spencer Penrose is buried in a chapel in the bottom of the tower. There’s a little exhibit about him in a building in the parking lot.

We’d probably skip the sky ride on future visits to the zoo, but I would definitely climb the tower again.

Colorado Springs’ zoo was recently named the sixth-best zoo in the country. It’s also the only one situated on the side of a mountain. We spent much of the day there, and saw everything there is to see.

We began with the giraffes. They have one of the largest herds in any zoo. There’s a walkway around the outside of the yard. For $3, we purchased six leaves of lettuce to feed them.

While my wife bought the food, I watched two of the giraffes doing … whatever this is.

The Will Rogers Shrine of the Sun (next post) can be seen on Cheyenne Mountain in the background.

My wife did most of the feeding. It was hard to get a photo because they were quick with their tongues. I kept one last piece, split it in two, and took this shot.

I think this was the most entertaining day I’ve ever had at a zoo. Several of the animals were very entertaining.

Two of the lions were sparring over a giant barrel in their enclosure until one of them stood it upright and struck this pose.

One of the orangutans stuck a bunch of straw on top of its head and then sat right next to the glass, playing with pickles.

It wasn’t just the animals that were entertaining. Our fellow zoo visitors were an assortment of characters. This woman, for instance. She sat for several minutes rubbing the back of a gorilla. Except she wasn’t — she was rubbing the outermost of three panes of thick glass that separated her from the gorilla. There’s no way the animal could have felt anything, and was probably unaware of her presence. But she sat there rubbing away as though they were best friends.

Other animals just chilled in the sun.

Have you ever considered that a zoo could totally get away with having 75% of its animals be stuffed. Who would know?

And then there were the views.

Note the lion at the bottom of the photo.

We paid an extra $7.50 to take the sky ride up the mountain and back. There wasn’t much to see at the top except a snack stand, a playground, and the view.

We’re not real big on zoos, but we both agreed this one was worth a return visit sometime.