2008-10 College Road Trip-Colorado

We headed off to Colorado and Nebraska on a college visit road trip. The kids are off school this week as the district combined MEA teacher’s conference break with school conferences.

We drove about 12 hours to Ogallala, Nebraska on Saturday. The drive was fine as Ray and LeAnn switched off driving. We did hit rain the last 2 hours and that made the last leg a little more difficult, especially when we either passed a semi or were passed by them. The trip went fast as the kids busied themselves watching movies, listening to music, playing games or even looking at scenery occasionally. We rented movies from Red Box for the trip as we found you can turn them in at any location, so we only kept them for a day then could restock with fresh movies as we made our way back and forth.

Sunday we headed into the Denver area. Our first stop would be at the University of Denver. We grabbed a bite at a nearby Chipotle. We thought it was strange because it was so different from all the ones we had been in. It was very small, had no menu board (they just gave us a paper menu), and was not laid out in the assembly line fashion. We later found out that this was the original Chipotle location!

Mariah had an admission interview set up for Sunday afternoon, along with an overnight stay over in the dorms with a student. This allowed her to get a good feel of what the actual dorm life is like in college. We met back up on Monday morning for a series of meetings with the admissions counselors, a campus tour and lunch in one of the dorm cafeterias. The campus is south of downtown (only 12 minutes by light rail as we heard many times). It is only a couple of blocks wide, but about a dozen long, with lots of open spaces. Some of the frat houses are adjacent to the main campus mall, which made them feel like the center of campus.

Tuesday we did not have any school visits scheduled, so we went down to Red Rocks amphitheatre. On the way there, we stopped at the Buffalo Herd Overlook, but today there were no buffalo on either side of the expressway. We changed our plans with no buffalo in sight and drove to the top of Genesee Park and got some wonderful views of the Rock Mountains.

The Red Rocks area was very beautiful as the large rocks jut out of the earth at about 45 degree angles. One of the lookouts we walked up to had a cross section of the geology of the area, which looked out over dinosaur ridge. We saw a couple busses over there and wanted to check it our and hopefully see some fossils, but when we drove over there, the road was closed from the direction we came, but we did see some people on the ridge working.

The Red Rocks Amphitheatre is an amazing structure built into the side of the mountain with large red outcroppings creating the side walls. There are 69 rows of seating and it has seating for about 9500 people. Even when you are at the top row, you can hear people talking or singing on the stage. There were a lot of people using the steps and bleachers for training purposes, running up and down the steps. The higher elevation makes the workout even tougher. We could even hear the sounds of the boxing gloves hitting the training mitts of the people on the stage when we were at the top. The concert season usually extends from June through September, and has been expanding each year with the number of concerts. The list of bands and acts that have played there is very impressive, from ABBA to Bruce Springsteen to the Beetles to Red Skelton. It originally opened in 1941.

Our next stop was in Golden. Our plan was to have a late lunch and then take the Coors Brewery tour. We parked and found and went to the Capital Grill for lunch and then headed to the brewery, but as we pulled into the parking lot, we discovered that they are no longer offering the tour. Now we had some additional time to kill, so we decided to drive up to Boulder to get a preview of the University of Colorado campus.

We drove around the campus and town and then parked near the Pearl Street Mall. This is an outdoor walkway mall that is about 6 blocks long. There are many performing artists along the mall. On this day, a gal was performing with her hula hoop; a guy was writing poetry on the spot for you (and typing it on a typewriter). One musician was playing a piano (it had wheels so he must have to roll it off the mall), one was playing a ukulele, and another was playing his guitar and singing loudly. There were multiple groups of kids playing hacky sack on the grass in front of the courthouse that fronts the mall. Hopefully they would clean up the area before they leave as there was a bunch of trash left in the area.

Wednesday morning we got up and headed into Boulder for our visit to the University of Colorado. The campus is about 5 times larger than Denver University, and feels a lot more crowded due to the larger number of students on campus. It lies in the shadows of the Flatiron Mountains, which give the students a lot of outdoor activities right “in their backyard”. The football stadium is right in the middle of campus, and I am sure it makes for a wonderful Saturday afternoon atmosphere. There are many dorms in the center of the campus, and they surround a large open grass field that becomes the central meeting point for kids all year long.


Later in the afternoon we headed up into the Flatirons to get an overall view of Boulder and the university. We first went to Boulder Falls, a 70 foot waterfall a short hike from the road. One boulder that had been put on display at the trailhead had a 1.5’ hole worn through the center of a 2’ thick stone.

Our next stop was the Boulder overlook, which gave some beautiful views of the valley. From there, we drove further up the mountain to the Flagstaff Summit, at an elevation of 6850 feet, about 1500’ above the University. The road was a series of switchbacks and blind curves at a steep grade. We were surprised how many bicyclists we saw going up the mountain. It would be a lot of work to ride a bike up the mountain, but it must be fun coming back down, but I’m sure a little scary.

We finished with dinner at Beau Jo’s pizza, whose specialty is Mountain Pie pizzas, which are sold by the pound and not by the diameter. They have very large crusts and they give you honey to dip the crust in when you have finished the meat and cheese portion.

Thursday morning we got up and headed up to Fort Collins for a visit to Colorado State University. This is another large school and large campus that sits at the foothills of the Rockies. Many kids ride their bikes both on campus and back and forth to school. You have to keep your eyes open. This week was focused on a food drive, so there were many canned collection points. They kicked off the drive last weekend as they attempt to line their oval drive through campus with donated food. Last year they collected over 140,000 lbs. of food.

After the tour, we headed to the Old Town area of north Fort Collins. We had lunch at the Spicy Pickle, which is a sandwich, soup and salad shop. We grabbed a couple movies for the drive to Omaha, and headed off for about 9 hours on the road. In addition, we lost an hour as we moved back into the central time zone. We stopped in North Platte and went to the Sonic Drive In. It was the kids’ first experience with drive in ordering and car hops serving the food. After sitting in the car for 4 to 5 hours to get there, it probably would have been better to eat somewhere other than the car. We arrived at our hotel in Omaha about 11:00PM.