I visited Denver and Glenwood Springs with some friends. This is what we did. I landed on Wednesday and leave on Monday for Chicago. I have a friend that moved out to Denver from Columbus, so myself and some other friends decided to visit her. We did a lot of outdoor activities, and explored a decent amount of downtown Denver.

Wednesday was a travel day for us. We picked out Glenwood Springs specifically for the hot springs. I decided to rent a car to drive us out there, because I wanted to drive something fancy and I had rental car points. I rented a Mustang convertible and it was so much fun to drive out there. It was about 3 hours away. On the way we stopped at Nowhere Pizza, which had pretty decent gluten free pizza made with rice flour. I was impressed. The decor was really neat and the table was covered in copper. I wish I could have tried the absinthe, but I was the responsible driver. We arrived at the condo around 10pm, and passed out.

Thursday - Glenwood Springs

The next day we started with the Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park. You take a cable car to get up to the top of the mountain. The cable cars were so neat, and take you up about 2000 feet. We managed to do the entire park in about 5 hours. For me the highlight was the alpine slide, which I had never done before. The speed is entirely controlled by you, and you are hooked onto the track so you can’t derail yourself. There’s a long cable that pulls you back up which is incredibly interesting to me. It’s obvious that this is mass produced attraction. We were also fortunate because it is the beginning of the school year, and no parent would take their kid out of school to go to an amusement park at the beginning of the year. So we had no lines.

There were several other thrilling rides. Mostly standard amusement park rides, but made more dangerous feeling because they would hang off of the 2000 foot cliff. We did a pendulum swing and a traditional rotary swing ride, both were absolutely thrilling. All of the rides were rock themed staying on point of this being a former mining town. There’s also a ride that is a smaller version of Fahrenheit at Hershey Park that hangs over the cliff called “Defiance.” It is absolutely brutal and really fast.

There was a very silly gimmicky drop ride called “Crystal Tower” we did not know what was involved when we went to do it. It was fast. Lots of flashing lights too. You’re dropped into this gimmicky cave filled with crystals and some kind of folklore. I was honestly expecting a fake malfunction from it because of the way the storyline was going, but it was a single drop down.

The adventure park is also known for it’s two cave tours. They are pretty standard caves with calcite that glows under black light. The King’s Row Cave is a very large cave that goes down pretty deep with stairs going down. It’s very pretty. The Fairy Cave tour demos some of the old school can lanterns used for the tours in the 1900s. There’s also a really pretty look out that you get to see.

We then went back to the condo, and took a break before heading to the Iron Mountain Hot Springs well within walking distance of our hotel. It has a lot of hot springs and was a good time. We spent our entire time parked in the 21+ area. You can get drinks delivered to whatever pool you are in, and they are incredibly strong. It’s a surprisingly European experience there very similar to the hot springs I visited in Karlovy Vary or Iceland. The nice part was how many different temperatures were available at the pool.

Friday - Travel Day

Friday was a lot due to dehydration from the hot springs. I got a decent gluten free bagel at Sweet Coloradough with some lox. We ate outside. Then we had a decent drive back in the convertible. On the way back we hit up the Georgetown Loop Railroad. It was a lot of fun. It’s this old steam engine that has been restored and has been in service for close to 100 years.

The steam engine is neat because it takes you to 2 service stops. One where you get to see a steam engine be filled up, and one that is part of a former silver mine. We did not do the silver mine tour. However I did get to see a neat diorama of something to pull silver up so worth it. The tour included a discussion of the history of the loop. People apparently used to get a train from Denver to one of the loop stations to go picnicking, and it would be about an hour and 10 to get there from Denver. It’s surprising to me how well the area used to be connected by rail.

The train also ran on coal which is pretty neat, and it’s amazing how bad the coal stank. It was pure sulphur and you could smell it a lot on the highway.

Saturday - Denver

On Saturday, we did some stand up paddle boarding. Not much to write about here. It’s pretty standard. The lake we went to was pretty nice. Due to labor day weekend it was super busy.

We got Mexican food on the way back into town. I am shocked by how good the Mexican is in Denver.

We went to Akihabara Arcade. They had the train game where you drive the train to be the exact locationin the Japanese metro. I played a lot of rhythm games there. They had decent drinks and were reasonably priced. Also played some racing games. Overall the games were well priced and it was nice to use quarters for an arcade. I really appreciate that the UIs of the rhythm games were in English so I could find the songs I wanted to play.

Afterwards we went to Colorado Sake company which had decent sushi and really good wings. I enjoyed their flavored sake.

We finished the night by visiting a satanic themed bar. They had tiki drinks, and mystery grab bags. Unfortunately one of the bags I bought was filled up with Italian Brainrot ai slop. It’s definitely a novel concept.

Sunday - Denver

We went to Casa Bonita. It was bought by the South Park creators during covid and was saved from demolition/bankruptcy. I have to say the environment feels a lot like Disney. Same kind of disconnection from the external world. Their water features smell very similarly too. They have quite a few neat shows going on with the divers and the mascots walking around. It is incredibly well staffed. There’s an interesting sorcerer show too, and it’s well staffed. I really enjoyed the dive show and the south park references they added. Especially the references to manbearpig. I also got a drink in a cool light up mug and ordering it caused a show to happen. (In all honesty this is budget Disney, were these kind of interactive experiences more common in the past?)

The arcade also paid out pretty decent compared to other arcades I’ve been to. I enjoyed the shooting gallery, and their custom in-house pinball machine. It was an old school mechanical score display model, but looks brand new. I really enjoyed the design of the table. It’s something for future research.

After that we went to the Forney transportation museum with a lot of trains. I found the descriptions of the exhibits to be well written, and there was a great opportunity to see some specialized rail things. They had a union pacific big boy, and quite a few examples of old train cars. It was neat to see the different versions of rail cars, and how luxurious rail travel used to be. They had a real kitchen on the trains.

We finished the night by doing meow wolf’s convergence station. I’ve been there in the past, so it wasn’t that new to me. It’s a very neat interactive experience, and truly one of a kind. However they have since implemented surge pricing which I am not a fan of. They also opened their bar on the 2nd story. The drinks were really expensive, but well presented in a silly way.

They need to make the Q-Dot scanners more responsive on load. There’s about 10 second delay before it will activate the memory on your pass. Which leads to challenges when people get lined up. All the locations are linked together via security camera feeds. I did not realize that you could see cameras from the other locations like Las Vegas or Santa Fe.

Wrapping Up

I had a great time hanging out with my friends. I really enjoyed driving the convertible. The hot springs were really neat and I had a good time there. I would visit again. Onwards to Chicago to see another friend on my way back to Philly.