Travel Adventures in Denver, Part 6

This is my sixth post about our recent travels to Denver. I recommend reading the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth posts before this one. Because I blog about educational travel, I received comped media passes for some of the places I visited during this trip. I paid full price for everything else. What I paid has no bearing on my reviews, as I only share what I honestly recommend.

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Travel Adventures in Denver

 

I started my third full day in Denver (Wednesday, June 25) at the American Museum of Western Art. The museum is only open three days a week and costs just $5 to visit, so I expected a very small museum with relatively few pieces exhibited. I was quite surprised to find a four-story building absolutely packed with art. 

  

They have a very nice self-guided audio tour that I really enjoyed. Unfortunately, they do not allow photos, so you'll just have to imagine what it looks like. Or, view a small portion of the audio tour on their website. If you enjoy art, this museum is well worth a visit. 

My next destination was Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies. I'd tried to fit a stadium tour into my agenda, but the timing didn't work out. I just walked around the outside on my own. It's a nice looking ballpark. 

  

Just a block away from Coors Stadium is the National Ballpark Museum. This museum is packed with baseball memorabilia, with an emphasis on the original 14 classic ballparks. 

I'm not much of a baseball fan, but my dad was. So baseball was a big part of my life growing up. Even without being a baseball superfan, I loved this museum. 

  

  

  

  

  

I spent a long time reading this poster about team names. And then I looked through baseball cards. I collected when I was young. 

  

After a thoroughly enjoyable visit at the museum, I was off to my next destination. Can you use these clues to guess where I went?

  

If you guessed Dairy Block, you are correct! I will also accept the answer of Milk Market. If you didn't guess either one because you've never heard of them, you're in the same position I would have been a week ago. Dairy Block is a district in the LoDo (lower downtown) neighborhood, originally home to the Windsor Dairy. Now it has shops, restaurants, a hotel, and a lot of fun art, like the pieces you see above. Milk Market is a food hall and it's where I had lunch. 

More musical art! And so much more. 

  

  

  

I walked most of the way back toward the hotel before deciding I wanted to ride a full loop on the 16th Street FreeRide just to check it out. Like the name says, it's free. It comes every few minutes and there are lots of stops, so you can just hop right on and ride. 

I hopped on, expecting to do a loop. Nope. Everyone off at the end of the line (in this case, behind Union Station). I only had to wait about 3 minutes for a different bus to take me all the way back to the Civic Center Station, where once again, everyone had to get off. I was frustrated about this at first, but when I thought about it, it makes sense. Besides, 16th Street FreeRide is clean, safe, convenient, and free. With all that going for it, I'm in no position to complain about anything!

I walked by the Capitol on my way to my next destination and discovered a bunch of food trucks. Too bad I wasn't hungry - there were some fantastic looking options!

I also found a muralist hard at work. That's not an uncommon sight in Denver. Over the course of 5 days, I saw five murals actively being painted. That would be impressive anyway, but in a city that's already covered with murals it's even more so. 

Next stop: Denver Firefighters Museum. 

I was expecting a small collection of memorabilia and a little bit of information about the history of firefighting in Denver. I was not expecting such a large, beautifully designed museum with lots of hands-on activities for kids!

The museum is packed with information and artifacts from 150+ years of firefighting in Denver. 

This is just a small portion of the hands-on opportunities for kids. 

  

  

I didn't know how interested I was in the history of firefighting until I spent time at this museum. 

  

There are a total of four poles, none available for trying. The sign said that modern firehouses are single-story buildings because of the number of injuries caused by sliding down poles, so I'm not surprised they don't want the general public plummeting from the second story to the first. 

  

I highly recommend a visit to the Denver Firefighters Museum. 

I walked the short distance back to the hotel. The plan was to do my Duolingo and rest for a bit. Steve and the guys had an evening event at Meow Wolf as part of their Summit, so I'd made plans with my childhood best friend, Nancy, who lives an hour from Denver. She would be picking me up in about 90 minutes. 

And then my phone rang. It was my mom, with the news that my dad had died. 

Steve walked through the door minutes later to drop off his stuff before heading to his party, so I was able to process the news with him. Then Nancy called to finalize our evening plans and I told her. We grew up next door to each other and were at each other's houses as much as our own, so it was a real comfort to talk with her. She asked if I wanted to cancel, but that was the last thing I wanted. We hadn't been together in person for years. I needed a fun evening with a good friend. 

The plan was mini golf. Nancy and I loved mini golf when we were young and went as often as we could convince our parents to take us. Our go-to course was old, with ratty (and sometimes squishy) carpet and faded, peeling paint on the obstacles. We loved it. 

Puttshack is nothing like the mini golf of our youth, other than that Nancy and I loved it too. It's basically the opposite of the 1970's mini golf course we frequented. It's indoors, impeccably clean, perfectly maintained, and the ball keeps score for you. Seriously. No counting strokes or carrying a tiny pencil to write down scores. The ball knows when it's been hit, when it enters hazards, and when you sink it into the hole.

 

There are four separate courses, each with 9 really unique and interesting holes. This one, inspired by air hockey, would have been a lot easier if the mallets hadn't been moving back and forth at different rates!

One hole has you answer a trivia question to know where to aim, while another has pinball features that award bonus points. 

  

All the holes were so unique and fun. 

  

We played one round of 9 holes, then had dinner. The food was delicious and the portions were enormous. 

After dinner, we played a second round of 9 holes. The slalom-inspired hole and the one that had us hitting the ball onto a series of increasingly smaller drums were my favorites. 

  

Golf ball art. 

Steve was already back from Meow Wolf when I returned to the hotel. His conference was over, so we'd be spending the rest of the time in Denver together. I'll tell you about our adventures in the next post.