“Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion.”
Anatoli Boukreev
A happy coincidence to the Colorado Rockies portion of The Great Baseball Ride was that Keke’s family was having a family reunion in Colorado. Relatives from all over the country but mostly the mountain/mid-west regions gathered in Golden to catch up.
We typically try to get to Colorado once a year anyway as the beauty of the mountains and there accompanying foothills have an immeasurably wonderful effect on us. For today, we sought out a nice day in Georgetown, CO.
Georgetown is a 1,000 person town about 45 minutes west of Denver. It sits at about 8,500 ft high and you notice as the weather tends to be cooler than the lower elevation in Denver. It was founded as a mining town, but we love it as a charming tourist destination.
We have no agenda this day except to enjoy the stunning drive from Golden to Georgetown and to enjoy the town of Georgetown itself. There is a beautiful lake that is the product of a dammed up stream. We saw kayakers and fishermen enjoying it.
The older part of town has a main drag that is filled with shops and restaurants. I could care less about the shops as buying more stuff is the last thing I want to do (our car is small and gets filled quickly). In contrast, food and drink ARE of interest to me as my stomach is not small and seems to take a lot to fill.
After some passive aggressive back and forth on where we should eat, I lose and we end up eating at The Happy Cooker. The place is charming was it felt like eating in somone’s house if they cleared out the furniture and put in tables. The food was okay, I went with the Huevos Rancheros, and would probably choose something else if I went back. The place was busy and fairly loud, not in a way that bothered us at all although a solo diner at a neighboring table got pissed off, asked for a box as soon as her food came, and left; poor lady.
We struck up a conversation with a group of travelers next to us. The man in the group was from the U.S., but the three ladies (one of whom he’d married) were from the U.K. We have encountered a few groups from the U.K. on our trip and have very much enjoyed our interactions; they all have been very jovial (their accents have been fun too).
Our day concluded as it began, with a beautiful drive. It is probably fortunate that we don’t live in this paradise as we’d probably need a brake job every couple of months from constantly going into the mountains.