dinosaurs & bison

on friday, i had an easy morning while i waited for my roommate, deanza, to arrive. i hadn't had breakfast, so as soon as she got there, we headed out to find food to eat. it was a cold day. (when i arrived on thursday, it was warm, but the cold sure came in on friday.)

we headed out to 16th street mall, where we saw these signs welcoming ala to denver.

that's the colorado state capitol in the background.

after walking a couple of blocks and looking at a couple of menus (it was too cold to go any further), we decided to eat lunch at paramount cafe. for appetizer, i ordered the calamari steak. i don't know what i was thinking. i think i just saw calamari and figured it was going to be good. i didn't read the steak part. it's supposed to be served with unagi-shoya sauce. i don't know if that's what it was, but what i got was a lot of mustard. it was disgusting. we could barely eat it. they offered to do it again, but i declined. they were very nice, though, and took it off the bill.

for the main entree, i had the gorgonzola & mushroom bison burger. that's my second meal in a room to have bison! but it had gorgonzola & mushroom, so i couldn't resist. and we were in denver, so we gotta eat those strange meats. it was pretty good.

i'm not sure what my roommate had. i believe these were mini buffalo chili dogs. i think she liked them.

after lunch, we headed back to the hotel to wait for our tour pick-up. we had decided to go on a 4-hour mountain parks tour. our first stop was dinosaur ridge, an area right outside of denver proper that is full of dinosaur tracks and fossils.

according to the guide, the area used to be an ocean and where the tracks are used to be the beach. here are the tracks--they've been covered with ash to make them more visible.

the guide said that these are the tracks of a mother and baby dinosaur. alongside are the tracks of a predator trying to separate the baby from the mother.

here is the sign about what kind of dinosaurs probably made these tracks.

we also saw what is called a dinosaur bulge. it sounds a bit dirty but, apparently, when a dinosaur steps on the ground, its weight pushes the ground down so what we're seeing is like a mold of its foot from the bottom.

we then saw these fossils. can you see the dinosaurs in action?

this was very cool to see these. i've been curious about going on a dig, but it's not something i've thought about recently. who knew that i'd be experiencing this in denver, especially since this wasn't included in the tour description.

from dinosaur ridge, we could see red rocks park, originally known as the garden of the angels. the guide said that these colored rocks gave colorado its name. he also said that these sandstone rocks were formed by shifting ocean plates.

we proceeded to the famed red rocks amphitheatre, a natural open-air amphitheatre. there are two huge monoliths here that provide great acoustics: ship rock (first photo below) and creation rock.

here's the stage, plus a view of the side seats against creation rock.

this is an awesome place. these rocks are really cool. if it hadn't been so gray (it was beginning to snow already), these pictures would have come out with even better color. if it hadn't been so cold, we might have been more tempted to roam around. as it was, we quickly moved inside the museum for some warmth.

we then went up to higher elevation. we were keeping an eye out for wildlife. but, because the weather was beginning to get bad, i think the guide was in a bit of rush. we saw some deer and a fox. we saw a couple of deer by the side of the road, and the guide turned around so we can take shots. they didn't even run away when we stopped near them.



we drove to the buffalo bill museum & grave. one of the first things we saw in the museum was--surprise, surprise--a stuffed bison. we also saw this poster for his wild west show, as well as various artifacts (firearms, costumes, native american things, etc.) i played dress up and pretended to ride a horse in there.

then we had to brave the cold so we could see buffalo bill's grave. the guide said we could see three states--colorado, wyoming, and arkansas--from the site, but we couldn't tell if that was true. it all looked flat to us.

i think the tour was supposed to include a pass-through the city of golden, home of the coors brewing company. but the snow was really coming down (and perhaps, we were running out of time, too), so we just headed back.

on the way back, the guide showed us the city's herd of bison. that was a grand sight, with the snow settling on the bison's backs.

all in all, we enjoyed the tour. it was cold, but we saw more things than we expected. that's always good.