Day Ten - Denver

A very nice day in Denver.  We met our son Arthur at noontime and headed down the road for an attraction that should be on everyone's bucket list:  Tiny Town!

Somebody put a hell of lot of work into these scale models
of nineteenth and twentieth century Denver buildings.

Back in 1915, George Turner, owner of Denver business Turner Moving & Storage and a friend of Buffalo Bill Cody, began building a miniature town for his daughter.  

Many of the miniature buildings have commercial connections.

In 1921, he opened Turnerville, which soon became one of the state's most popular attractions.

Miniature buildings crowd the hillside behind Tiny Town.

In 1939 the attraction became known as Tiny Town.

I think this same obese old fart was in the Western Gateway
museum at the Arch in St. Louis.

The train was also added in 1939.  There are two of them now.

If the attraction is busy, like today, they will run two trains.

Arthur's picture would be below, if he allowed us to post it.  He's handsome and smart and a great guy, but does not like to be advertised.

At least three engineers were available to motor us around Tiny Town.  Ours works for the company that actually manufactured the trains.  Diesels with smoke to look like old coal burners.

These guys acted like they have the best job in the world.
It could well be true.

The miniature buildings, mostly based on real Denver properties,
and mostly built in the 1930's, 1940's and 1950's by the Turner
family, number in the hundreds.

Still more...

...and more...

...and more.

At the easternmost end of Tiny Town, a playground for the
many children, for whom the history took second seat to the fun.

The trainride, albeit on a somewhat smaller scale train than we rode on at the Ohio Railway Museum, enjoyed a larger distance, and we finally returned to the point of departure.

All in all, I'd recommend Tiny Town, especially for a young
family on vacation.  All the kids seemed to have a grand time.

By then, of course, we were hungry and thirsty, and Michelle (or our GPS voice, have you forgotten already?) suggested the Sit-N-Bull Saloon, only 3+ miles away.  OK, it wasn't impressive to look at, and the waitress sent us upstairs to find a booth on our own, and didn't show up for twenty minutes afterward, but something told me we'd found a treasure.  Maybe it was this sign:

Now, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne is where our granddaughter
Angelina lives, and to find an ale brewed there on the menu
in the mountains of Colorado had to be a sign, didn't it?

Ultimately, the food was great, as was the beer and even the service (perhaps I overstate it a bit here) and we enjoyed a fine lunch together.  In addition to normal things, like a grilled cheese and pepper (Mary F) and a burger (Arthur) and a Reuben (Jan) we ordered an appetizer, Rocky Mountain Oysters.  Which almost everyone know is buffalo testicles.  OK, these are over-advertised.  Very over-advertised.

Mary Frances outside the Sit-N-Bull Saloon

From Sit-N-Bull we headed back toward Denver, toward the Denver Nature and Science Museum.  We have been here before, but the programs change often, so we decided to check out the program at the Planetarium, titled Into Space and Back, which turned out to be a little disappointing, not quite the spectacular presentations we'd seen at this, and other, planitaria.  After that, we headed for the Tales of the Maya Skies exhibit, and were told that we would need still another ticket purchase, after paying two admissions each already.  No way.  Time for a little rest time at Arthur's apartment, and connecting just a bit with Scersha and Stephanie, his two cats.

Scersha is always the first to investigate new guests.  But no
sudden moves, please.

 We ended the evening with a very nice dinner at the Applebee's next door to our hotel, and look forward to see our son tomorrow before we leave the Denver area for parts further west.  This has been a wonderful journey so far, and family has made it better than we could have expected.