Adventures in Colorado

In May, Mom and I traveled to Colorado for a few celebrations with my cousin's family. We had such a good time seeing family members and hanging out for a birthday and then a First Communion.

Since we didn't let the family know that we were staying through Monday for some strange reason, we were left with a Monday without family and without plans (since they had to work).

So Mom and I decided to take a trip up into the mountains and see some fun tourist-y stuff. Without a lot of time and since both of us wanted to see the scenery, we bought a package tour on Grey Line for the morning. It worked out great!

 

The first stop on the tour was up in the mountains, to Red Rocks. This is an amphitheater from the 1930s that has hosted concerts and other presentations since then. In the mornings, lots of locals come to work on the rows and rows that have been built into the side of the mountain.

It was such a beautiful morning to be outside, I can totally understand why these locals wanted to work out in the sunshine!

 

After we spent a bit of time enjoying Red Rocks, it was time to set off for the next stop.

This is postcard point, or something like that. All the postcards in the Denver area that have the mountain range on them were supposedly taken from this overpass on the way out of town. Not sure how true that is but my goodness, it is pretty!

The next stop on the trip was Buffalo's Bill grave.

Buffalo Bill had a simply amazing life story. He had such grand adventures! There's a museum at this site that documents everything he had accomplished and then some. His grave is on Lookout Mountain along with his wife, in Golden, CO. It's a gorgeous view.

It's awesome to note that there is also a fake buffalo on the grounds, but like the signs says, we couldn't get on it. :(

You can see all of Denver and the suburbs from up there.

That was the last of the big stops on the Grey Line tour, so they took us back to the mall where we had started. Since Mom and I had a few more hours to kill before our flight left Denver, we did some quick googling of other fun things to do in the area.

We found out that Hammonds Candy Factory gives free tours frequently! Done and done.

 This is a family-owned candy company (until very recently) that's been making candy canes and other yummy things since the early 1920s.

They make everything by hand in this factory and it shows. They give samples at the end of the tour and it is quite good!

Of course, you finish the tour by entering a gift shop. There were so many sweets to try it was almost impossible to choose! We ended up with some truffles for the flight home, and of course some of their famous candy canes for the family we were going home to.

I love trying out little local gems when we travel. Going around Denver with my mom for the day was so much fun - I hope I can vacation with her again sometime soon!