Chapter 71 -- The End of the Road
October 10, 2001
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Let’s get to the punch line first: The long interval since the previous chapter of this travelogue is because we haven’t been traveling. We’ve spent the summer in the Denver area, trying to decide if this is the best spot for us to settle permanently, and also house hunting (which is a great way to learn about the area). We’re now in the final stages of purchasing a house in Golden, Colorado, expecting to close on October 19. So this will be the last chapter of our four-and-a-half-year odyssey around the continent. After an intermission while we settle into the house, we’ll undoubtedly continue to travel on a part-time basis. Our 35' trailer is for sale, if you know anyone interested. (We'll want something smaller for our future part-time travels). The rest of this chapter has almost no RVing content. Read on only if you are interested in our impressions of Denver.
7/4/01 We celebrated Independence Day by attending a Colorado Rapids soccer game in the evening at Mile High Stadium. It turned out to be an exciting game as several recently-acquired players (including Valderama – perhaps the most recognized name and most recognized head of orange hair in American soccer) made their initial appearance and contributed to a 3-1 win over DC United. After the game, a huge fireworks display lit up the sky for at least 20 minutes. Perhaps drawn more by the fireworks and by curiosity about the new players than by the game itself, a crowd of 60,000 set a new attendance record by a wide margin.
Two new Dell Inspiron laptop computers arrived a couple of days ago, and it’s taking a seemingly endless amount of time to get familiar with the new features and to transfer data from the old machines. A built-in drive reads and writes several types of CD (Compact Disk) as well as reading DVD disks – amazing.
7/12 Our daughter Leata’s arrival at the Denver International Airport this evening gave Dave the first excuse to see this relatively new airport. It’s built on the prairie, far out in the boondocks to the Northeast of Denver. The roof is a spiky white canvas tent. From a distance, it looks like something from a science fiction movie. Closer up, it looks like an itinerant carnival site. It’s got all the latest gadgets, including banks of pay phones containing modem plugs and credit card readers, and rows of kiosks with free Internet terminals, which seem to be limited to Email and to the web sites of the sponsoring companies – I saw no way to access web sites other than those of the sponsors. They also have awkward non-standard keyboards, so I quickly gave up on exploring the capabilities.
7/13 Leata’s arrival gave us an excuse to do some of the local sightseeing which we’ve been postponing. Today, we visited the Butterfly Pavilion, in Westminster, a northern suburb of Denver. We’ve seen several such butterfly-oriented attractions, usually as part of a zoo. This one claims to be the first one ever built. It’s certainly large and well done, although in a modest building. They also have an interesting insect room, although unlike the butterflies, the other insects are in individual cages. The current attraction is a large group of tarantulas. A volunteer docent was handling a hairy black tarantula the size of a teacup, placing it gently in the palm of anyone who sat down to enjoy this novel experience.
One of the standard tourist activities in Golden is to tour the Coors Brewery, so of course we had to do it. The tour is well done, and we learned a few things about beer making while walking through this very large facility. We sampled several different beer varieties in the free tasting room at the end of the tour.
We had an early dinner at the Chart House, driving through heavy rain to get there. The view was spoiled by the lowering clouds and rain, but the food was good. Still raining lightly when we left.
7/14 Dave and Leata hiked the Red Rocks trail – a busy multi-use trail which starts just a mile or so from our campground and climbs along a ridge to the south of Interstate 70. We went as far as Red Rocks Park, where the trail descends through the interestingly eroded layers of dark red sandstone, then loops back at a lower elevation. It’s a well-maintained and pleasant trail through interesting terrain, with occasional long views out over Denver to the plains beyond. We had to be constantly alert for speeding mountain bikes on this busy weekend. Afterward we drove out I-70 to Genesee to watch the bison herd for a few minutes. There are signs asking people to stay 3 feet back from the fence. A huge old bull bison seemed to feel it was his duty to enforce the rule, patrolling the fence and charging a group of people who were standing too close. They quickly backed up. It was quite clear that this immense animal could run straight through the fence if it chose to. In the evening, we all went to see AI – the current "hot" movie. Late dinner at Hops Bar & Brewery in Golden. The menu was interestingly eclectic and the food well prepared. The beer was ok, but nothing special.
7/15 We drove up Mt. Evans, which, at a little over 14,000 feet, claims to have the highest paved automobile road access in the country (perhaps in the world?). (Pike’s Peak is about the same height and makes similar claims, but I believe the upper part of that road is gravel.) The prospects for a view looked bad as we started up – with dense clouds, snow flurries, and fog covering the upper half. But by the time we got up there, the clouds had lifted, the sun appeared, and the light dusting of snow began turning to tendrils of steam. It was very windy and cold, so we didn’t stay long. It feels a little weird to have comfortably driven up to an altitude where most airplane pilots feel they need a pressurized cabin or an oxygen mask. Our turbocharged diesel truck hardly noticed the thin air. We noticed it immediately as soon as we tried any exercise more strenuous than a gentle walk.
We took Leata on a driving tour of central Denver, after visiting three open houses at homes for sale in the attractive Park Hill, Mayfair and Congress Park neighborhoods. It’s a photogenic town, with many very interesting buildings and plenty of well-maintained parks. The city maintains a carefully designed artificial white water rapids on the South Platte River, just a few blocks from downtown. We walked the paths along a portion of the river and stopped to watch kayakers and kids with inner tubes playing in the rapids. Dinner at Healthy Habits – an unusual all-you can-eat fixed-price buffet-style restaurant. It features "healthy" food – made from fresh ingredients with low fat, reduced-sodium recipes. In spite of that, the food was good, especially the huge salad bar, the array of fresh homemade soups, interesting bread, pasta, and pizza and a nice selection of fresh fruit. The selection was quite broad. The senior price of $8.09 for all you can eat makes it a bargain. (As I edit this report, in early September, I have to report that this restaurant has just gone out of business. Too bad!)
7/16 Up at 4:45 AM, to get Leata to the airport for her return flight. We watched the sun rise over Kansas during the 45-minute drive from our RV Park in the western suburbs, to the airport, far out of town to the Northeast.
8/16 I’ve just realized that I haven’t written anything for a month. We’ve been devoting most of our time to house hunting. This is a very interesting experience, and we’re learning about the Denver area in much more depth than would be possible in any other way.
We’re undecided about which of the diverse regions around Denver are most suitable to our needs, so we’ve looked at everything.
The mountains beckon, and we’ve seen some wonderful homes up there. "Mountains" is a bit of an exaggeration, but that’s what the flat-landers call anything that is above the point where the Front Range starts abruptly upward from the relatively flat plains of Denver. The transition is quite abrupt, broken only by a few isolated mesas and outcropping of upthrust sedimentary rocks in the last couple of miles of prairie.
We’ve looked at many properties that are only slightly in "the mountains" – actually fairly gentle foothills, at an elevation of about 7500 feet above sea level (compared to 5300 feet for central Denver), and only half an hour’s drive from downtown Denver.
Some offer spectacular views – sometimes to the east, over the Denver high-rise buildings out to the plains of Kansas. Others look west to the peaks of the Continental Divide, still snow-capped in mid-August (and already beginning to accumulate snow for the coming winter). Some are in deep canyons, surrounded by stands of tall ponderosa pines or rolling meadows of lush grass.
We’ve also looked at a few homes that were further up into the mountains – altitudes up to 9000 feet, but still only an hour from Denver, via twisting mountain roads. Some of these offer really spectacular views. One home had almost a 360 degree view – downtown Denver to the southeast, Kansas to the East, the snowy ramparts of the Continental Divide looming to the west, and Wyoming to the North, slightly obscured by Long’s Peak, in the "foreground" (about 50 miles north, in Rocky Mountain National Park).
Above 8000 feet, the feeling becomes truly alpine. The trees are stunted, the ground is mostly rocks and sparse ground-hugging alpine plants, and there can be snow or an overnight freeze on any night of the year.
At one home, at only about 7000 feet high and half an hour from the Denver Performing Arts Center, we were out in the yard discussing where to locate a vegetable garden, when we looked up and saw a deer grazing just across the street in a neighbor’s yard. Any attempt at a garden up here first involves installing an 8’ high deer fence. Then, one has to import truckloads of soil – there is almost no soil that would support vegetables.
At another home in the same area, the owner described the wildlife in his one-acre yard: deer wandering through almost daily, a perennial family of raccoons in the shrubbery beside the front porch, a family of red squirrels nesting in the pines behind the house, an occasional black bear wandering through the neighborhood, etc.. One evening last year, they looked out and saw a pair of mountain lions standing on their front porch, peering into the living room.
We’d love this opportunity to commune with the wildlife. But Helen wants to garden, which would be a real challenge.
We’ve looked at homes in the central Denver area, and found tiny remodeled Victorian bungalows on tiny lots with essentially no yard, selling for prices approaching half a million dollars.
We looked at one wonderful 2000 square foot Washington Park condominium, on the 26th floor of a modern building, with two huge decks looking west to the mountains, for only $670,000, plus $1050 monthly payments to the condominium association, plus $30/month for one indoor parking slot, plus an additional fee for an outdoor parking slot for a second car, plus additional fees for small storage lockers in the basement (the condo itself had very little storage space.)
On the plains north and east of Denver, there are many new subdivisions, with modern houses of all sizes and types. We’ve seen some very nice properties with all the amenities of 21st century design, on one or two acre lots, with not a tree for miles except recently planted saplings, at prices that are only semi-ridiculous, and with one-hour drives to downtown.
We’ve looked at some "compromise" properties in Lakewood, Aurora, Littleton, Wheat Ridge, and Arvada, perhaps 20 minutes from the central area - nicely remodeled 1960’s homes on half an acre, reasonably quiet neighborhoods with maturing trees, but no view at all. The prices are still ridiculous by our former standards, but the lower altitude permits serious gardening, and the drive to stores, museums, and concerts is reasonable. Perhaps we’ll end up with such a compromise. At least we wouldn’t have to worry about deer or elk eating our garden, or snowstorms in August. On the other hand, this morning’s paper reported a bear wandering through backyards in Littleton.
9/10/01 I drove up Lookout Mountain a couple of days ago, to check out the snow. Three inches fell up there (at 7400 feet altitude). At our 6100-foot campground, we got lots of cold rain, but the temperature dropped only to 39 overnight. We've looked at a few houses up there. I drove past a couple, and seeing the yards covered with snow in early September slightly cooled my desire to live in the mountains.
We thought the rainy day would break a record - it rained all night and most of the next day. That day threatened to be the first day of our 90 days here on which we didn't see the sun. But the skies started to clear an hour before sundown, so we got an hour of sun and can still say that the sun has shown every day since we arrived on June. This in spite of it being an "unusually rainy" summer. Today is brilliantly clear, and the temperature is back up to 80.
9/18 Mike and Joyce Hendrix, RVing friends from the Florida Panhandle, arrived to spend a couple days here. We stopped by their motorhome shortly after they got set up in Golden’s attractive city-owned RV Park on Clear Creek, a few blocks from downtown. We talked for a while, walked an attractive path from the RV Park along the creek to Golden’s Pioneer Museum, and then talked some more while enjoying the exhibits of the region’s history. Later, we continued talking between mouthfuls of good Mexican food at a local restaurant.
9/28/ Our offer has been accepted on a house in Golden, about two miles northwest of the RV Park where we've stayed all summer. The house is about a mile from the business center of Golden - far enough away to be quiet, but close enough to walk there. We expect to close on October 19, which coincidentally is also the average date of first snowfall here.
One of our criteria in selecting a house was that it have two comfortable guest rooms for family and friends. This house qualifies - with the two guest bedrooms each having private baths, and with an adjoining sitting room separating those bedrooms from the rest of the house. RV Parking is allowed, and we have a big, wide, level driveway that can easily accommodate our trailer, or the RV's of visiting friends. We hope we'll have lots of visitors.
The property is 0.6 acres, with a nice south-facing garden spot and potential greenhouse site, so Helen will have all the gardening opportunity she wants. And we're probably urban enough so that the deer and elk won't be eating the flowers. (Two of the houses we looked at recently had mule deer standing in the yard watching us.)
The mountains start rising steeply within half a mile of the house - there's a trailhead for Lookout Mountain within an easy walk. The "real" mountains are a bit further. The Continental Divide, with its string of 14,000-foot peaks, is about 40 miles by road at the closest point (Berthoud Pass). Rocky Mountain National Park is about 55 miles, and several major ski areas are within an hour's drive. We can get to most of the downtown Denver locations (central library, concert halls, museums) in 20 minutes to half an hour.
When the wind is right, we often see people with parasails launching from Lookout Mountain and landing a mile or so from our house. I'll have to find out where to get lessons.
In the three months we've been here, there has been exactly one day with no sun, and one other day where we only got about an hour of sun. Yet there's enough rain so that the hillsides remained slightly green all summer. Winter nights are cold, but people also talk about 70-degree sunny days in January, and seem to use their outdoor patios all winter.
So we're optimistic that we've picked the spot which (excepting Hawaii and the narrow strip along the Pacific coast) has the best climate in the country. I crudely measure climate by asking how many days of the year I could comfortably do outdoor activities. There were only a few summer days when we felt confined to air-conditioned spaces. We'll soon find out about winter.
10/5 Our first Denver snow fell overnight. We didn’t get to see it coming down, but there’s a dusting of snow covering any area that’s protected from the heat of the still-warm soil – matted grass, car and building roofs, picnic table, etc. There’s probably more in the mountains, but the dense, low clouds block our view of even the nearby foothills. As I write this, at 8 AM, snow is starting to fall again, but very fine, almost invisible – kind of a partly frozen mist. The temperature is hovering right at 32 degrees. The trailer furnace is doing its job – the trailer is warm and almost cozy although the single-pane windows do create some drafts. In other parts of the country, we’ve often had condensation problems on the windows when the temperature got near freezing, but even with this seemingly damp misty condition outside, the actual humidity is apparently fairly low, and the windows show only tiny patches of condensation.
10/8 A lovely drive through the high valleys of the Front Range, hoping to see what passes for autumn leaf color in this part of the world. We took US 6 west, up Clear Creek canyon (through several tunnels along the way), then turned north on SR 119 through
10/10 We need to be In Golden for the closing on Oct. 19th, and for a bunch of related details before that, but will probably make a quick trip East immediately after that (without RV) to visit friends and relatives in Michigan, Ohio, and Rochester and bring back the belongings that are stored in Rochester. After unsuccessfully searching for a rental, we’ve purchased a 24-foot enclosed cargo trailer that we will tow to Rochester and back and then re-sell. We expect this to turn out far cheaper than one-way airfare plus car rental in Michigan/Ohio plus one-way rental of a U-Haul or Penske or Ryder truck of comparable capacity. It also has the advantage of freeing us from a rigid schedule.
Then comes the fun. We will own an empty house – we saved almost no furniture, other than a bookcase, an end table or two, a pair of chairs, and a couple of lamps. The stuff we stored in Rochester is books, family photos and records, pots & pans, china, and Dave’s tools. So we will have a huge and urgent buying spree ahead of us when we return – refrigerator, washer and dryer, a bed, sofas and chairs, yard tools, etc.