Denver Diary

Published in

shiretoerebor

5 min readJul 11, 2021

I attended a wedding in San Francisco in May and wanted to continue the trip into Denver or Seattle. For some reason in my mind, Denver was warmer in June, so I headed over to spend the next month in Denver to begin my nomadic lifestyle. As soon as you arrive at the airport of the city though, you are going to be in awe (unless you live around mountains already it’ll be status quo). I got off the plane and saw just mountains all. around. Just everywhere. Snow capped and gorgeous.

I have a super generous friend who had an extra guest room in his condo, so I got to live rent-free for a month in one of the hottest parts of Denver: LoHi!

My main purpose of being in Denver was to 1. Not be in Georgia and 2. Backpacking.

After my first weekend, I realized I had made a terrible mistake of underestimating the snow fall and the effects of altitude, because many of the trails were still covered in many feet of snow. Regardless, I did go hiking and the three I made it to are: Flat Tops, Lost Creek, and Maroon Bells.

Having backpacking as my real substantial reason for being in Denver combined with having lived as a hermit for the past year due to Covid drained me of any desire to be social. The only person I hung out with in Denver was my landlord friend and my hiking partners. I also had been doing a one-meal-a-day schedule with breakfast as my meal, so not that many restaurants were open as options. Nevertheless, this post covers some of the Denver-esque experiences!

Red Rocks! Is probably the first thing that pops up on any Denver related Google search of things to do. (It also came up in Sweet Tooth season 1). It was less than an hour’s drive from LoHi so I dropped by to see the sunrise on the way to one of my weekend backpacking trips.

Especially in the morning there are tons of parking all around, and many many herds of deer! The short drive to the parking lot by the amphitheater is already gorgeous with the (literally) red rocks jutting out and contrasted with the green grass. The amphitheater was less exciting as was the sunrise.

Botanical Gardens! Some backpacking partners from Boulder had a guest and drove to Denver to visit the Botanical Gardens. I don’t really like plants. But I tagged along for the social recharge. Tickets are easy to come by and cost $15 online. Parking is plentiful and free right across the street. The garden is great! But not being interested in plants beyond just a “hey thats cool” as I walk by, the garden was not necessarily a top of the list thing to do.

A nice relaxing thing to do on a summer day in Denver was to walk over to Commons Park. This stretch of parks along the river is a series of different parks but nothing particularly distinguishes them so it looks like a gigantic riverside park. There are food stands, and places to dip your feet, and kayak rentals if you want to get in the water. The Denver flagship REI is also worth a visit for their climbing wall, great garage sale section, and just the cool layout that makes you walk for five minutes before you check out.

Colorado had some things that I feel like are special for Colorado like their King Sooper grocery chains. Nothing special about the inside of them but what a name. Another one with a fantastic name is Good Times, which is Colorado’s special Dairy Queen type of a chain. And of course, when in Colorado, you gotta stop by a dispensary to see how nice they are.

The food! I didn’t expect too much from Colorado really, but LoHi was fantastic for good eats. It has a mix of upscale fancy QR code using overpriced and locally sourced food type of restaurants (Senor Bear) and also old, friendly, idgaf what the calorie count of this burrito is type of restaurants (Tamales by La Casita, Familia Taqueria). But wherever you go, just. So. much. Mexican food.

Excellent ice cream experience at the overrated Little Man Ice cream too though. I say it’s overrated, and I think it is, but I think I had their ice cream like ten times in that month.