Denver Mountain Parks

 

This morning I joined a small bus tour to explore some of the mountain parks in the 'foothills' between Denver and the mountains.  These foothills are around 7,000 feet - whereas the highest of the Colorado Rockies reaches more than 14,000.  Our first stop was at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre - not hard to see how it gets its name!

 

The rocks alone were fascinating - layers of different colour a and types of rock, folded in all directions.  A sunny day would have given a little more colour to them - Denver has 300 sunny days a year, apparently, but sadly this wasn't one of them!

 

I bought a postcard to show what the Amphitheatre looks like in sunshine (although this sky seems a little improbable!).  The Amphitheatre seats 10,000 on wooden bench seats and in season has hosted many famous names, including the Beatles.  The natural acoustics of the surrounding rock as are apparently very impressive.

 

It was quite a workout walking down to the stage and back, especially at that altitude!

 

There are no concerts at this time of year of course but this second postcard shows what it must be like.

 

Leaving the Amphitheatre we moved on through a narrow canyon of very different rock, carved out by a river which was alongside the road and partially frozen.  

 

Unfortunately not very good photos as taken from the bus.  At this point we had climbed above the clouds and so it was sunny, at least for a while until we climbed into the next layer!

 

At the top of the canyon was a frozen lake - a reservoir - and although difficult to see, these people were fishing through the ice.  Presumably it is quite thick!

 

A little further on and we stopped on a bridge for what turned out to be our only sighting of the impressive snow covered mountains that Colorado is famous for.

 

By the time we arrived at Lookout Mountain, we were unfortunately back in the clouds, so no mountain views.

 

Instead we visited the grave of Buffalo Bill and a museum dedicated to his memory which told his life story, focusing on the years when he ran his Wild West show, which travelled the world, including two quite extensive tours of the UK in 1903 and 1904..

 

 

One can only speculate about what the British people of the time must have thought of such a show!