Day: June 30, 2006

This morning, we started our day early with a tour of the Denver US mint.  This mint makes all denominations of US coins currently in circulation.  Unfortunately, the tour did not allow us to bring cameras in, so the only picture I have of the mint is from the mint’s website.  The thing that I found the most interesting about the mint is that it uses the same type of machine to mint all types of coins–only the dies and the blank coins fed into the machines change to change the type of coins being minted.  Today, the mint was making pennies.  Pennies account for 62% of all coins minted in the US.

After the US mint, we toured the Colorado capitol.  The capitol building is designed to resemble the US capitol, except it features a real gold dome.  200 ounces of gold cover the gold.  The building is beautiful inside, but was hot and quiet with both houses of the legislature in recess.  The capitol building is shared by the executive and legislative branches of the state government.  The supreme court used to be in the same building, but moved to a larger courtroom in a building across the street in 1977.

 

Just a few streets over from the capitol is the home of the Unsinkable Molly Brown.  Mrs. Brown became a wealthy woman through her husband’s gold mining, which caused them to move into this Denver home from their previous home in Leadville, CO.  Mrs. Brown was one of the survivors of the Titanic, and she helped to rescue many other people and make sure that their needs were met once they landed in America.  Today, her house is restored to its 1910 splendor and open for tours.  No pictures were allowed on the tour, so the only picture we have is of the house exterior.

The high today was 98 degrees, so we escaped the afternoon heat in the hotel’s indoor pool.  In the late afternoon, we returned to the 16th street mall.  We walked several blocks past the end of the mall all the way to the South Platte River, where we were able to see the mountains in front of us and the city’s skyline behind us.  On the way back toward the hotel, we stopped in many of the shops, but didn’t find anything worth buying.

 

Tomorrow morning, we will enjoy the hotel’s complimentary hot breakfast, drive through some of Denver’s famous neighborhoods, hopefully make it to Red Rocks Park, and then head back to Washington.  It’s been a good trip, with lots to do, but not enough to make us need a post-trip vacation to recover.

This morning, we drove from Colorado Springs to Denver, a trip of about an hour. From Denver, we headed northwest to Boulder to go on the Celestial Seasonings factory tour. It was interesting to see what goes into their teas–Celestial Seasonings sells about 75% herbal teas, which are technically not even teas, since they do not include any part of the tea tree. Unfortunately, Celestial Seasonings uses a lot of proprietary equipment, so they do not allow people to take pictures on the tour.

In the afternoon, we went on a tour of an operating gold mine (they will be blasting next week). The mine tour was not what we were expected, with a real miner as our tour guide. The mine owner was quite the talker and we suspect that he had been in the bottle before we arrived. Everyone involved with the mine was quite the character. We also had the chance to pan for gold (and found several small flakes) before leaving.

Back in Denver, we checked into our hotel and walked five blocks downtown to the outdoor 16th street mall for dinner. We ate a Maggiano’s, an Italian restaurant where Laura went for prom. We had a five course family style dinner with enough leftovers to be tomorrow’s lunch. On the way back to the hotel, we enjoyed seeing the real gold dome of the state capitol lit up at night.

Tomorrow morning, we have a tour of the US mint, where they make several types of coins. We also want to see the unsinkable Molly Brown’s house and experience downtown Denver.