It’s been a relatively short, but long day. I slept in late (8:30 – I’ve been waking up with the sun most days), and headed from Denver to Golden, CO. Some of you may have heard of it, it’s home to the largest brewery in the states, Coor’s. So, I spent a couple hours touring the brewery and sampling the different beers they make in their lounge. To my surprise, Blue Moon is made by Coor’s. Who knew.

It was definitely a very interesting place to visit, it’s an interesting chemical process to make beer. I didn’t realize that the barley actually germinated before they used it. The canning process was amazing to behold as well. You definitely have to marvel at the technology we’ve developed to package things, all without human interference. And a tidbit of knowledge I picked up: were a railroad car full of 6-packs to be delivered to your house, you would have enough to drink a 6-pack a day for 90 years. Interesting trivia, eh?

After lunch, I headed back to Denver to check out Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum. Kind of a cool place, not really worth the admission though. In my opinion, the South Dakota Air and Space museum was better. Wings was crammed into an old Air Force hangar, planes were so close together you could barely walk between some of them and the lighting was abysmal. However, they did have an X-Wing Fighter on display (I’m such a huge nerd…).

They closed at 5pm and I quickly discovered that navigating downtown Denver was tough, especially during rush hour. I gave up my attempt to see the 16th St. Mall and Larimer Square for the night (I’ll try again when I go through Denver on Sunday) and headed for Colorado Springs. An hour of fighting rush hour, stop and go interstate travel later, and I made it to the outskirts of Denver, another 50 minutes, and here I am for the night.

Tomorrow, the Air Force Academy, Garden of the Gods, Pikes Peak and Cripple Creek.

Travel Distance: 116 miles

It’s been a fun trip so far. South Dakota was… boring east of the Missouri River. Flat, dull and boring. West of the Missouri, the hills are rolling, the Wall Drug billboards pick up a bit more and eventually, you stumble upon the Badlands. Ahhh… the Badlands, I have to admit that I’ve fallen in love with them. They’re remarkably pretty even when they’re imposing. I’ll be stopping again on my way back at the end of the summer.

The Minuteman Missile National Monument was not really all that impressive. We couldn’t get tickets to go into the Launch Control Center (I’m still annoyed that there are so few tours available). The silo there wasn’t all that impressive. It’s welded open with a big glass structure over it so you can look down into it. If it’s sunny, forget it, the glare is so bad you can hardly see that there’s anything inside. I will admit that the park rangers there are very knowledgeable and have gone out of their way to research the program’s history.

Really, the better thing to do (which we did) was drive to Ellsworth Air Force Base by Rapid City and go on the tour offered by the South Dakota Air and Space Museum, which takes you down into a missile silo.

Mount Rushmore was so-so, Jewel Cave was amazingly beautiful, Wind Cave National Park was gorgeous (I didn’t go down into the cave, just the surface park), and Needles Highway is one of the most scenic pieces of road I’ve driven on.

P.S. Wall Drug is the biggest tourist trap ever.

This morning I left South Dakota under a cover over rain that followed me through Wyoming and into Colorado. A stop at the Colorado Welcome Center changed my plans from going immediately to Rocky Mountain National Park, now, I’ll be spending the next couple days in Denver and Colorado Spring.

So, tonight, I’ve got a pile of literature, a bunch of photos from South Dakota, a desk and a bed. Before using the latter piece of furniture, it’s my intention to sort through the literature, make plans for the next two days and start uploading my photos from the last week.

Travel Distance: 367 miles

Overall, today was a pretty leisurely day, which was nice compared to the whirlwind of the previous 6 days. Kevin left at about 7am this morning to head back to Iowa and work, leaving me without a solid agenda moving forward, several gigabytes of photos that I’ve taken and not culled, processed and uploaded yet and a book that I’d started the previous days. I decided to tackle this in order of importance and once I set my book down, finished, at 1:30 in the afternoon, it was time to call AT&T and cancel the service in my old apartment which I’d forgotten about until today.

Half an hour on hold with AT&T left me with a pretty decent plan and my next stop will be Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado instead of my prior plan to head for Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. Satisfied with my progress so far for the day, I headed a few miles north to drive the Needles highway inside South Dakota’s Custer State Park ($5 entrance fee for a week pass, good at any SD state park).

It was definitely an interesting drive, I’ve got a decent prong-horn photo lying about on a compact flash card now along with a photo of a mule deer that might turn out reasonably okay. This whole trip however, I haven’t gotten any bird photos. In fact, the only birds I can even recall seeing are 2 brace of vultures at the Badlands. Obviously, I’m doing something wrong. Oh, and of course I’ve got what I hope will be some neat photos of the rock formations along the highway.

Like about half the nights since I’ve gotten to South Dakota, it’s been raining again. Right now I’m sacked out in the car attempting to work on photos while I’m waiting to see if the rain will slacken up enough to pitch my tent tonight or if I’ll be spending a night in the Jeep for the first time.

Travel Distance: 65 miles