We left Westsliffe on Sunday and headed towards Rocky Mountain National Park. Since Zack Attack is a huge fan of Coors Original, otherwise known as Banquet beer, and less often known as the cold yellow dog, we thought it would be a no brainer to stop in Golden, Colorado and visit the Coors Brewery. We drove through the historic downtown area on the way in. I love these little mountain towns. The historic downtowns are always cute and quaint. This one was especially nice because although a lot of it obviously catered to tourists it did seem to have that feeling of a great little walkable community for locals as well. There was a cute little RV park right along the Clear Creek where it looks like the whole town goes tubing every weekend. There were so many people walking around with tubes slung over their shoulders that I thought it was some sort of an event. Turns out it was just a summer weekend in Golden. Unfortunately the little RV park was all booked. It was a perfect little spot, walking distance from downtown. We kind of fly by the seat of our pants a lot because we don’t necessarily know how long we will be in one spot, so making reservations in a busier area can be an issue.
We gave up on the Coors tour for that day and decided to head out to Golden Gate Canyon State Park. Technically this park is only about a half hour from Golden, but once you start up the windy road you have to slow down a bit, at least if you are a bit lumbering like the Grolar Bear, and to get to the actual campgrounds you need to head to the northernmost parts of the park. We ended up getting into the campground quite late and snagging one of the only spots still available. The park is huge and and full of lovely trees and trails. We hunkered down that first night as the rain came in pretty good. It was pretty enough though that we decided to stay the next day and book the campsite for the following night as well. We did a small hike along the Raccoon Trail in the morning. The raccoons did not seem to realize this was their trail however, because none of them were around. In the afternoon I did some laundry and some writing to try to get caught up on the blog. The poor Wonder Beast was exhausted and slept most of the day.
On Tuesday, we moved camp to a spot slightly closer to the town proper, the Chief Hosa Campground, about 15 minutes or so outside of Golden. We quickly set up camp and headed into town to do the Coors Brewery tour. It’s a self guided tour and not as ‘behind-the-scenes’ as might have been really fun, but it was still fun. It’s completely free and they even give you 3 free tastings at the end of the tour. Zack Attack tasted Coors Extra Gold the last time we were in Colorado and it is now his Colorado drink of choice. The don’t really seem to distribute it outside of Colorado. However, we learned the secret to Extra Gold from a bartender in the tasting room. Extra gold is just a mix of Original and Killians Irish Red. Now Extra Gold can be had just about whereever we are. After the brewery we wandered town a little bit and had a snack and some ice cream before heading back to camp.
The next day we went and saw the Buffalo Bill Musuem and gravesite at Lookout Mountain. Apparently the spot of this showman’s burial was highly contested as Cody Wyoming, the town he founded, felt he should be buried there. His family stated his final wishes were to be buried on Lookout Mountain overlooking a very young Denver, Colorado. Some of the old show signs from his wild west show are just awesome examples of early poster art. Worth the $5.00 entry fee in my opinion.
We went a little further up the road and Zack Attack couldn’t resist learning some gold panning techniques outside of Black Hawk. Vic’s gold panning is a little ramschackle operation right off the side of the road, but those boys do know what they are doing. They earn a little extra money teaching gold panning to kids and Zack attacks, but most of them live there at least part time and gold mine and pan in earnest. They’ve got all sorts of bigger equipment around where they are still pulling stuff out of an active mine. Fun little peek into another world. A lot of the guys were just like you’d imagine a miner back at the turn of the century might have been, except now they live in truck campers.
After Vic’s we hit the road to make it to Meeker Park, right outside of the Estes Park side of Rocky Mountain National Park. Meeker Park was a nice national forest campground. Also, we were finally far north enough that we would actually have a campfire! Campfires had pretty much been a no-no up until here because of the terrible fire season everyone had been having.
