Circus Circus, Tahoe and High Sierra Snow (part 3)

Continuing the travel saga from the last 2 posts. part 1 - flights & hotels. part 2 - Nevada. Now, for part 3, Colorado. I'll get to some bus/car content next time.

Welcome to Denver?

hotel room view

We arrived at Denver International on Sunday, about an hour before the Broncos hosted the Pittsburgh Steelers in a divisional playoff match-up, while the Seattle Seahawks / Carolina Panther game was still being decided. We asked an information booth about mass transit (nope), and then called the hotel about a free shuttle (nada). Our options, according to the hotel, were to grab a cab or take a airporter shuttle van, either ran $50. We saw a shuttle at the curb, so we approached for a ride. The driver was overtly unpleasant and short-changed me $10 for the displeasure. The van already had 5 other people in it, so we got ourselves a tour of Denver on the way into the city center.

Bouncing along, I was keeping up to date on the Seattle game and shared the play-by-play as it appeared on my phone. The rude driver picked up on the conversation and put the game on the van radio. It turned out that everyone in the van was good with Seattle losing. Ha. This created conversation, though, and soon we learned that one of our fellow occupants had a ticket to the Denver/Pittsburgh game waiting for her. We tried to convince her to go, though I think she may have skipped it for needed rest.

All That's Missing Are the Tumbleweeds

Erbert & Gerbert's

We got checked in, dropped our stuff in the room and immediately set out in search of some city energy and some food. The streets were dead. Seriously, I could have laid down in the middle of a 3-lane one-way street for 15 minutes and not blocked a car. We walked around Lower Downtown (LoDo), past the 16th Street Mall, and around. The only other people we saw were 2 couples who appeared to be on their way to a rodeo, complete with pretty hats and their thumbs tucked behind their oversized belt buckles. Neat. Denver is clearly more "western" than the cities further west. We stopped in at Erbert & Gerbert's Sandwich Shop, and the locals behind the counter explained the empty streets: football. If you weren't at the playoff game, you were in front of a TV watching it. This sandwich shop, apparently, was one of the few places around downtown Denver that didn't have a TV, so it also didn't have any customers. Except us. We ordered 1 each of two different suggestions from the counter guys (Flash & Comet Candy). They were really good. On our walk back to the hotel, we started seeing more people. There were a few kids skating on a mall ice rink, and a few patrons of the 7-11 on the corner. Concluding it was half-time, we made our way back in time for the end of the game. T's friend R and his dad were in town after visiting UCD the day before, so we visited with them a little bit.

Colorado State University

CSU ceramics studio

We had allotted Monday, MLK Jr Day, to wander around Denver. After we got back to the hotel, T indicated that he'd seen enough to get a sense, between the long shuttle and couple of hours of walking. Instead, he wanted to see Colorado State University (CSU) in Fort Collins. Recognizing the upside of not over-scheduling things, I rented a car for the next day on the spot. The drive between Denver and Fort Collins is a straight-arrow shot up I-25 for about an hour. CSU was mostly closed for the holiday, but we were able to get into the art building and poke around. The building was small, but the students seemed very invested. Even on their day off, they were milling around, drawing and hanging out. Based on the installations, the multiple kilns and posters, the community looked very vibrant. Similar to UNR, there was considerable construction going on, and we had a hard time figuring out what was where. That morning, we had left Denver in a bit of a rush, and failed to eat anything, so by 2:PM, we were starving and couldn't think about schools any more. We stumbled upon Aloha Coffee and Grill. Coming from the west coast, my expectations for Hawaiian are pretty high, and Aloha didn't quite make it. The coffee was good, though. T left CSU glad we visited, but not too interested: far from snow and travel, but looked like some great programs. The drive back to Denver was highlighted by the discovery of the funniest convenience store name we'd ever seen: the Loaf 'n' Jug.

University of Colorado, Denver

CO has Rockies, but is also flat

Tuesday was our last day of the trip, and it was time-crunched. We had a tour at 10, had to check out by noon and had a 4:PM flight home. That's tight. We readied for the day, packed up the room and hit the coffee shop in the lobby (learned from yesterday) for some breakfast. Walking to the campus was only a few minutes away, so we were early for the tour. Unlike UNR on Thursday, this tour group was bigger, and the campus was having its first day of classes after winter break. It was teaming with people. The guide pointed out that this first week everyone comes in to get schedules, ID's, etc, so it was unusually busy. UCD is a commuter school with limited on-campus housing options. Still, there are dorms, and for a location, it's prime. The Pepsi Center, Coors Field, Mile High Stadium and all of LoDo is right there. Unfortunately, the school shares a campus with 2 other educational institutions, and it hasn't any sports teams, reducing the sense of community. The mostly-commuter student make-up further erodes that sense. There are lots of internship and corporate-placement opportunities, though, so for the prospective student who wants a degree and then a direct path into corporate America, UCD is a great option.

Homebound

CSU construction map

We detoured into Which Wich for a go sandwich on our way back to the hotel. They have an interesting model: your order slip is the paper bag in which your wich is placed and then given to you. Clever. And a pretty good wich too. We cleared out, checked out and walked across the street to the taxi stand where a line of cabs awaited. Now that the game was over and business had resumed, the streets were bumping again. Still, we had a quick and informative ride into the eastern plains where Denver International Airport awaited. Our cabbie had lived in Portland, so we talked about the marijuana legalization parallels and local music comparisons. T and I easily passed through ticketing, security and boarding. After 6 flights in as many days, we'd gotten pretty efficient at it. Boo met us at PDX, grinning at our huge smiles when we picked her out of the car queue.

We had a great trip. We saw 3 universities, visited with family and friends and tasted some snow. Most importantly, T had made his decision about which school was his first choice: UNR. He has learned since this trip that he was accepted, and so he is going through the process of determining costs so he can commit. Go T!

As always seems the case, there have been lots of things going on with cars, and such both before and after this trip, so I'll post on some of that here soon. As always, thanks for following along and Hapy Saint Patrick's Day!

CSU kiln and kiln construction materials

Circus Circus, Tahoe and High Sierra Snow (part 1)

A few years ago, I took the boys on an adventure to Bend. Hearkening back to that, today's post reflects on a trip I took last month with the older one.. visiting colleges. We were gone a week, so I'm splitting this up into multiple posts. Part 2 here. Part 3 here.

Why
My son T is in his senior year of high school and hasn't decided on a college plan quite yet. He knows there is a real money constraint, though, so he's been looking through that lens. The experts say to just apply where you want to go and see what the money is later. I think T looked at that as setting up for disappointment. He wanted to see University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) and University of Colorado, Denver (UCD). Since both schools are in areas that experience colder weather than we do here, I thought a mid-winter trip could help him recognize the climate difference. We also wanted to go when school was going on so he could get a sense of what the real vibe on campus was like. Having settled on a trip around MLK, Jr. Day, we started planning.

Planning
I started working on a plan to pull the multi-city trip together in November. I tried Kayak, Google and a few other ideas, but the prices felt kind of high. So, I tried a travel agent to see if that made a difference. It did, but not in the way I expected. The price was about the same, but the accommodations and flight times weren't all that great. I'll get to that later, but in the end, we were able to slip out of town mid-day the Wednesday before MLK, Jr. Day and return the Tuesday night after, missing only 3 full days of school/work.

Flights

we were in upper left corner window

Over the course of less than a week, we flew 3 different airlines, visiting the 6 major cities in the Rockies and US Pacific Northwest: Portland, Seattle, Denver, Reno, Salt Lake City and San Francisco.

We took Delta from Portland to Reno by way of Salt Lake City. Of the 3 airlines, these flights were the least pleasant. The planes were over-full and the seats were closer together than on the other flights. They had in-seat televisions, which for a fee allowed you to watch programs. The SLC airport was nicer than I expected, though. We enjoyed a local-feeling brew-pub between flights.

We flew United from Reno to Denver by way of San Francisco. Our travel agent had set up this leg to depart Reno at 6:AM, meaning we had to return a rental car and checkout of a hotel in time to hit security by 5. On a Sunday morning. Sucky. United was okay, just the routing was dumb and the seats wouldn't tilt back, making sleep difficult.

Our last leg (home) routed us through Seattle on Alaska. Ordinarily, I love Alaska. Unfortunately, our plane from Seattle to Portland was a 20-person puddle jumper propeller plane. Still, this leg was the best of the three, even with the bumpy final flight.

Hotels

Denver, CO

We stayed at two different hotels, obviously; one in Reno and one in Denver. They were quite opposite in terms of amenities, too. Our hotel in Reno (Ramada Reno Hotel and Casino) had seen better days. It was off-strip, but not near the airport nor the University. The elevator made noise, there were sketchy folks lingering outside the casino (did I mention it had a casino?) and the pool was closed. The desk folks were great and the servers in the hotel restaurant and bar were very nice. With a room rate under $100 a night, though, it was really all that we needed. In fact, it probably helped that it lacked many amenities; it may have contributed to how much time we spent seeing Nevada and California. We did have a top floor room with a fantastic view of the Sierra Nevada mountains, the University and the strip.

The hotel in Denver (Hilton Garden Inn Denver Downtown) was very nice. Again, we had an upper floor room but with a view on the downtown side. Loaded with amenities we didn't use like a pool, weight room, etc,but we did hit the hot tub and get room service once.

That's it for today. I'll dedicate individual posts about Nevada and Colorado later. On the cars front, there have been lots of things going on. I'll get to posting on all that too. Like I've said before, if I'm not posting, its because we're having adventures... that will be posted on later. :)
Thanks for following along.