Our Denver School/Vacation
On February 25, 2002 I went to a UniData Database
System Administrator Class in Denver, Colorado. My company was kind enough
to suggest that Cindy could go along with me if she wanted to.
Since her brother lives in Denver I didn't have to twist her arm. She hadn't seen Randy in over 10 years. She also hadn't taken a vacation in the last 10 years either. Needless to say, she was excited to go.
We flew out on February 26 at 6 AM from Philadelphia which is a 2 hour drive from our house. I was lucky enough to be picked for a random strip search in Philadelphia. Lucky me!
When we arrived in Denver and finally picked up our luggage and rental car it was around noon. Since the hotels check-in time was 3 pm, we had several hours to kill.
The Denver Museum of Nature and Science was on the way to the hotel so we decided to stop in and look around for a few hours. We unpacked our digital camera and went into the museum. The very first thing we saw looking at us was a Tyranosaurus Rex. Boy, are they huge! I'd barely be a snack for a big boy like that!
We started roaming the halls and rooms of the museum taking pictures of almost everything we saw. It was around 5 pm when we finally left the museum and we didn't even see half of what they had! It was a lucky thing that Cindy had decided to pick up another memory card for our digital camera. She had picked up a 256 mb card which will hold around 400 pictures. When we got home we discovered we had taken 284 pictures!!!! Wow, that's a lot of pictures to sort through!
For the rest of the week I went to classes and Cindy went back to the museum 2 more times. She says she still didn't see everything they had there. The museum closed at 5 pm and my classes didn't get over until 4 pm so I wasn't able to visit the museum again. Cindy had taken so many pictures that when I was browsing through them it was almost like being there.
I guess I had better get back to our time track here. After we left the museum we went to the hotel and got checked in and called Randy. He said he would be able to meet us at around 8 pm. We rested for a little bit and then left to visit Randy at the McCormick Seafood and Grill on 17th Avenue in Downtown Denver. We ate supper and chatted. They serve the best Clam Chowder I've ever eaten. The chowder is so thick you could eat it with a fork if you wanted to and do they ever put a lot of clams in their chowder! We got back to the hotel at around 11 and immediately fell asleep.
The next morning Cindy took me to class and then she went back to the museum. This became our routine, I went to class and she went and saw the sights of Denver. She visited the museum one other day and then her brother took her on a tour of the 16th street mall in downtown Denver. We visited with Randy after I got out of class. Of course, we had to go to McCormicks so I could have some more of the clam chowder and oyster stew! Boy, I wish they could make those dishes here like that...
Finally Friday arrived and we got everything packed up. Our flight left Denver at 11:10 am. We left the hotel at 6:00 am so that we would get there on time. When we checked in our luggage was lucky enough to be picked for extra screening and had to be sent through an x-ray machine. After that we went through security.
Once more I was (Ahem...) lucky enough to be dragged out of line and strip searched. This time around I had forgotten to take the pens out of my shirt pocket and it had set the metal detector off. Cursing under my breath I put my belt and shoes on and we headed down to our concourse.
We had been sitting there for about an hour when we overheard someone talking about our flight being delayed. I got up and went to the check-in desk and sure enough, our flight had been delayed. It was so delayed that they had cancelled it! The weather in Chicago was so bad that flights were being cancelled.
They immediately booked us on another flight, United this time, but we had to go back and reclaim our luggage and go through the entire check-in procedure again! Finally, we found the United check in desks. Once again, our luggage was lucky enough to be picked to go through the x-ray procedure. This time the procedure took around 30 minutes to do, a far cry from the 10 minutes that the first x-ray procedure took.
Now that we had checked our luggage in we were once again going to run the gambit of the metal detectors. Much wiser this time, I took everything metal off. Pens, change, belt, you name it, if it was metal, I took it off and put it in the plastic box!!!
Sigh.... Once again I set the damn metal detector off and once again I was getting frisked and searched. The only thing I can think of that set off the metal detector was the rivets on my levi jeans... I was getting a little hot under the collar by this time. After getting searched I got dressed once again. We finally arrived at our gate and we sat down and started reading our books. Then they announced that it was time for us to start boarding our flight.
Ah, finally, no more strip searches!!! Or so I thought... As Cindy and I showed them our tickets we BOTH won the lottery and were picked as Random Strip Search victims!!! By this time I knew the drill, I took off my shoes, belt, unloaded pockets, pens, change, you name it, if it was metal, I removed it. As you can well imagine, by this time I was more than a little hot under the collar. I understand their reasoning but get real, this was the 4th time I had been searched, and 3 of those times were in Denver in a little less than 3 hours...
Finally we were allowed to board the plane and soon we were off to Philadelphia! We arrived in Philadelphia and it was raining! When we left Denver the hotel said that it was 25 below and when we arrived in Philadelphia it was 45 degrees. It almost felt balmy! Then we reclaimed our car and drove back home.
Here are some of the pictures that we took while we were in Denver:
Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
Tyranosaurus Rex.
Another picture of Tyranosaurus Rex.
Yes, another T-Rex picture!
A picture of a T-Rex tooth. Cindy's hand is next to it for size comparison.
I wouldn't want to see a real T-Rex from this angle!
Looking down the front hall of the museum.
A Pleisosaur or Myosaur?
Me getting stepped on by a T-Rex.
A giant model of a Locust.
A skeleton of a Fin Whale.
Plaster casts of a woman and dog that died in Pompeii.
A huge plasma bulb!
The head of the Fin Whale. It's huge!
Looking back at the body of the Fin Whale.
We enter the realm of the Egyptian Mummies!
A newly created Sarcophagus. This was created by a class using the methods the egyptians used.
A house of an egyptian god, I presume they meant the Pharoah.
A side view of the house of an egyptian god. See the tiny models of people in the center?
A scribes coffin lid, it's about 3,000 years old.
Cindy getting a close up look of the scribes coffin lid.
A mummy of a rich woman who was buried in a common mans coffin.
A mummy of a poor woman and her coffin.
A close up of the poor woman's mummy.
A cat mummy.
Some of the charms that were buried with mummies.
More of the charms that were buried with mummies along with household effects.
More of the mummy charms.
A closeup of the head of the myosaur/pleiosaur?
Looking down at the myosaur/pleiosaur?
Catching fish for dinner!
A trilobite.
A look at the bottom of an ancient ocean.
Looking down at several fossils.
A model of a giant dragonfly from millions of years ago.
An ancient reptile.
Some ancient reptile fossils.
This may look like a giant cockroach but it's a giant spider with a body about 20 inches long. With it's legs it must have been huge!
Looking down at several fossil fish, turtle and a pterodactyl.
Two dinosaurs fighting.
One of the first mammals.
Two small theropods.
A large brachiosaur. You can just barely see Cindy under the tail by it's rear legs.
A hadrosaur or more commonly known as the duck billed dinosaur.
Various skulls of dinosaurs. There is an allosaur and T-Rex skull here.
A baby hadrosaur, it is a little smaller than a chicken.
A flock of small meat eating dinosaurs.
A better shot of the fossil turtle.
A nice picture of the fossilized fish.
Looking up at the pterodactyl.
One of the first ancient reptilian fish.
An ancient carnivorous boar that lived in Nebraska. What is really amazing is that it is about 7 foot tall above the shoulders!!!
Several mammalian skeletons of animals that lived around Colorado.
Small antelope skeltons alongside ancient rhino's.
One of the first horses, it had 3 toes.
A modern horse.
A skeleton of a wooly mammoth and a wolly rhino. Look at the strange skull that is between them.
A closeup of the strange skull. The animal was related to a camel and I believe a rhino? I can't remember.
A skull of a mastadon. &It is HUGE, it stands about 6 foot tall.
A picture of our hotel room.
Another picture of our hotel room.
A picture looking down into the lobby of the hotel. We were on the 6th floor.
Another view of the lobby.
Cindy admiring the view of the lobby.
Looking out our bedroom window we had a view of a stream and a small bridge.
Looking east out our bedroom window.
Picture of Randy and Cindy.
The Colorado Capitol building.
Statue of Buffalo Bill.
Large panaramic view of the mountains of Colorado. They are about 50 miles away and what you see are about 2 miles higher than the surrounding land!!!
Wild cat in Casa Bonita's.
Part of the floor show at Casa Bonita's.
More of the floor show.
One of the actors came racing by our table during the floor show.
More of the floor show.
Again, more of the floor show.
One of the actors diving from the top of the waterfall. There is a pool about 30 foot below the top of the waterfall.
There was a wandering band that went around to tables playing mexican music.
Another part of the floor show.
The sheriff wandering around from table to table.
Standing behind the waterfall looking down into the pool that the actors dove into.
A small waterfall that you walked by on your way out of Casa Bonito's.
A closeup of the wandering mexican band hamming it up for us!
A view of the inside of Casa Bonita's.
Another view of the inside of Casa Bonita's.
A picture of the fountain outside of Casa Bonita's.
Picture of the outside of Casa Bonita's.
Picture of my UniData Instructor, Mike Ryan.
Picture of the Denver Technical Center from the building I took class in.
Another picture of the Denver Technical Center from my class building.
Picture of a Bald Eagle.
Picture of Sage Hens Drumming.
Another picture of the Sage Hens Drumming.
Picture of Frigate Birds nesting.
Picture of Flamingo's nesting.
Picture of some Cranes.
Lioness and her cub.
Another picture of Lioness and cub.
Picture of a male Lion.
Picture of an Gemmslock Antelope?
Picture of an Aardwolf.
Leopard and it's prey in a tree.
A Spring Hare and an African Wildcat.
A modern day horse.
Pictures of Zebras.
Some Warthogs.
A few Baboons.
Picture of two Impalas.
Huge Antelope of some kind.
A few more Antelope of some kind.
A Gemmslock Cucumber.
A bronze statue of a cat catching a bird.
Look closely and you will see a weasel.
A diorama of a desert scene.
Nesting Golden Eagles.
Another diorama of a desert scene.
A Kiwi, a flightless bird.
A picture of a nesting crane?
Some more pictures of sage hens.
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&
Since her brother lives in Denver I didn't have to twist her arm. She hadn't seen Randy in over 10 years. She also hadn't taken a vacation in the last 10 years either. Needless to say, she was excited to go.
We flew out on February 26 at 6 AM from Philadelphia which is a 2 hour drive from our house. I was lucky enough to be picked for a random strip search in Philadelphia. Lucky me!
When we arrived in Denver and finally picked up our luggage and rental car it was around noon. Since the hotels check-in time was 3 pm, we had several hours to kill.
The Denver Museum of Nature and Science was on the way to the hotel so we decided to stop in and look around for a few hours. We unpacked our digital camera and went into the museum. The very first thing we saw looking at us was a Tyranosaurus Rex. Boy, are they huge! I'd barely be a snack for a big boy like that!
We started roaming the halls and rooms of the museum taking pictures of almost everything we saw. It was around 5 pm when we finally left the museum and we didn't even see half of what they had! It was a lucky thing that Cindy had decided to pick up another memory card for our digital camera. She had picked up a 256 mb card which will hold around 400 pictures. When we got home we discovered we had taken 284 pictures!!!! Wow, that's a lot of pictures to sort through!
For the rest of the week I went to classes and Cindy went back to the museum 2 more times. She says she still didn't see everything they had there. The museum closed at 5 pm and my classes didn't get over until 4 pm so I wasn't able to visit the museum again. Cindy had taken so many pictures that when I was browsing through them it was almost like being there.
I guess I had better get back to our time track here. After we left the museum we went to the hotel and got checked in and called Randy. He said he would be able to meet us at around 8 pm. We rested for a little bit and then left to visit Randy at the McCormick Seafood and Grill on 17th Avenue in Downtown Denver. We ate supper and chatted. They serve the best Clam Chowder I've ever eaten. The chowder is so thick you could eat it with a fork if you wanted to and do they ever put a lot of clams in their chowder! We got back to the hotel at around 11 and immediately fell asleep.
The next morning Cindy took me to class and then she went back to the museum. This became our routine, I went to class and she went and saw the sights of Denver. She visited the museum one other day and then her brother took her on a tour of the 16th street mall in downtown Denver. We visited with Randy after I got out of class. Of course, we had to go to McCormicks so I could have some more of the clam chowder and oyster stew! Boy, I wish they could make those dishes here like that...
Finally Friday arrived and we got everything packed up. Our flight left Denver at 11:10 am. We left the hotel at 6:00 am so that we would get there on time. When we checked in our luggage was lucky enough to be picked for extra screening and had to be sent through an x-ray machine. After that we went through security.
Once more I was (Ahem...) lucky enough to be dragged out of line and strip searched. This time around I had forgotten to take the pens out of my shirt pocket and it had set the metal detector off. Cursing under my breath I put my belt and shoes on and we headed down to our concourse.
We had been sitting there for about an hour when we overheard someone talking about our flight being delayed. I got up and went to the check-in desk and sure enough, our flight had been delayed. It was so delayed that they had cancelled it! The weather in Chicago was so bad that flights were being cancelled.
They immediately booked us on another flight, United this time, but we had to go back and reclaim our luggage and go through the entire check-in procedure again! Finally, we found the United check in desks. Once again, our luggage was lucky enough to be picked to go through the x-ray procedure. This time the procedure took around 30 minutes to do, a far cry from the 10 minutes that the first x-ray procedure took.
Now that we had checked our luggage in we were once again going to run the gambit of the metal detectors. Much wiser this time, I took everything metal off. Pens, change, belt, you name it, if it was metal, I took it off and put it in the plastic box!!!
Sigh.... Once again I set the damn metal detector off and once again I was getting frisked and searched. The only thing I can think of that set off the metal detector was the rivets on my levi jeans... I was getting a little hot under the collar by this time. After getting searched I got dressed once again. We finally arrived at our gate and we sat down and started reading our books. Then they announced that it was time for us to start boarding our flight.
Ah, finally, no more strip searches!!! Or so I thought... As Cindy and I showed them our tickets we BOTH won the lottery and were picked as Random Strip Search victims!!! By this time I knew the drill, I took off my shoes, belt, unloaded pockets, pens, change, you name it, if it was metal, I removed it. As you can well imagine, by this time I was more than a little hot under the collar. I understand their reasoning but get real, this was the 4th time I had been searched, and 3 of those times were in Denver in a little less than 3 hours...
Finally we were allowed to board the plane and soon we were off to Philadelphia! We arrived in Philadelphia and it was raining! When we left Denver the hotel said that it was 25 below and when we arrived in Philadelphia it was 45 degrees. It almost felt balmy! Then we reclaimed our car and drove back home.
Here are some of the pictures that we took while we were in Denver:
Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
Tyranosaurus Rex.
Another picture of Tyranosaurus Rex.
Yes, another T-Rex picture!
A picture of a T-Rex tooth. Cindy's hand is next to it for size comparison.
I wouldn't want to see a real T-Rex from this angle!
Looking down the front hall of the museum.
A Pleisosaur or Myosaur?
Me getting stepped on by a T-Rex.
A giant model of a Locust.
A skeleton of a Fin Whale.
Plaster casts of a woman and dog that died in Pompeii.
A huge plasma bulb!
The head of the Fin Whale. It's huge!
Looking back at the body of the Fin Whale.
We enter the realm of the Egyptian Mummies!
A newly created Sarcophagus. This was created by a class using the methods the egyptians used.
A house of an egyptian god, I presume they meant the Pharoah.
A side view of the house of an egyptian god. See the tiny models of people in the center?
A scribes coffin lid, it's about 3,000 years old.
Cindy getting a close up look of the scribes coffin lid.
A mummy of a rich woman who was buried in a common mans coffin.
A mummy of a poor woman and her coffin.
A close up of the poor woman's mummy.
A cat mummy.
Some of the charms that were buried with mummies.
More of the charms that were buried with mummies along with household effects.
More of the mummy charms.
A closeup of the head of the myosaur/pleiosaur?
Looking down at the myosaur/pleiosaur?
Catching fish for dinner!
A trilobite.
A look at the bottom of an ancient ocean.
Looking down at several fossils.
A model of a giant dragonfly from millions of years ago.
An ancient reptile.
Some ancient reptile fossils.
This may look like a giant cockroach but it's a giant spider with a body about 20 inches long. With it's legs it must have been huge!
Looking down at several fossil fish, turtle and a pterodactyl.
Two dinosaurs fighting.
One of the first mammals.
Two small theropods.
A large brachiosaur. You can just barely see Cindy under the tail by it's rear legs.
A hadrosaur or more commonly known as the duck billed dinosaur.
Various skulls of dinosaurs. There is an allosaur and T-Rex skull here.
A baby hadrosaur, it is a little smaller than a chicken.
A flock of small meat eating dinosaurs.
A better shot of the fossil turtle.
A nice picture of the fossilized fish.
Looking up at the pterodactyl.
One of the first ancient reptilian fish.
An ancient carnivorous boar that lived in Nebraska. What is really amazing is that it is about 7 foot tall above the shoulders!!!
Several mammalian skeletons of animals that lived around Colorado.
Small antelope skeltons alongside ancient rhino's.
One of the first horses, it had 3 toes.
A modern horse.
A skeleton of a wooly mammoth and a wolly rhino. Look at the strange skull that is between them.
A closeup of the strange skull. The animal was related to a camel and I believe a rhino? I can't remember.
A skull of a mastadon. &It is HUGE, it stands about 6 foot tall.
A picture of our hotel room.
Another picture of our hotel room.
A picture looking down into the lobby of the hotel. We were on the 6th floor.
Another view of the lobby.
Cindy admiring the view of the lobby.
Looking out our bedroom window we had a view of a stream and a small bridge.
Looking east out our bedroom window.
Picture of Randy and Cindy.
The Colorado Capitol building.
Statue of Buffalo Bill.
Large panaramic view of the mountains of Colorado. They are about 50 miles away and what you see are about 2 miles higher than the surrounding land!!!
Wild cat in Casa Bonita's.
Part of the floor show at Casa Bonita's.
More of the floor show.
One of the actors came racing by our table during the floor show.
More of the floor show.
Again, more of the floor show.
One of the actors diving from the top of the waterfall. There is a pool about 30 foot below the top of the waterfall.
There was a wandering band that went around to tables playing mexican music.
Another part of the floor show.
The sheriff wandering around from table to table.
Standing behind the waterfall looking down into the pool that the actors dove into.
A small waterfall that you walked by on your way out of Casa Bonito's.
A closeup of the wandering mexican band hamming it up for us!
A view of the inside of Casa Bonita's.
Another view of the inside of Casa Bonita's.
A picture of the fountain outside of Casa Bonita's.
Picture of the outside of Casa Bonita's.
Picture of my UniData Instructor, Mike Ryan.
Picture of the Denver Technical Center from the building I took class in.
Another picture of the Denver Technical Center from my class building.
Picture of a Bald Eagle.
Picture of Sage Hens Drumming.
Another picture of the Sage Hens Drumming.
Picture of Frigate Birds nesting.
Picture of Flamingo's nesting.
Picture of some Cranes.
Lioness and her cub.
Another picture of Lioness and cub.
Picture of a male Lion.
Picture of an Gemmslock Antelope?
Picture of an Aardwolf.
Leopard and it's prey in a tree.
A Spring Hare and an African Wildcat.
A modern day horse.
Pictures of Zebras.
Some Warthogs.
A few Baboons.
Picture of two Impalas.
Huge Antelope of some kind.
A few more Antelope of some kind.
A Gemmslock Cucumber.
A bronze statue of a cat catching a bird.
Look closely and you will see a weasel.
A diorama of a desert scene.
Nesting Golden Eagles.
Another diorama of a desert scene.
A Kiwi, a flightless bird.
A picture of a nesting crane?
Some more pictures of sage hens.
Picture of the other 2 cubs.
Another view of the Mountain Lion feeding her cubs.
Some Mountain Sheep.
A picture of some Lynx.
A picture of a pack of Wolves.
A picture of a Big Horn Sheep.
A picture of a herd of Musk Ox.
A picture of some Artic Wolves.
Picture of Caribou.
Picture of some Mink.
Picture of Wolverines.
Picture of more Mountain Sheep.
Another picture of a Lynx.
Picture of a Deer.
Picture of an Elk.
2 Grizzly Bears roaming a meadow.
3 Brown Bears.
Picture of California Sea Lions.
Picture of Fur Seals.
Another picture of more seals.
A picture of Walrus. They can weigh up to 3000 pounds!
Another picture of a Grizzly.
Another picture of the head of the Fin Whale.
Looking at the Fin Whale skeleton head on.
Another look at our old friend T-Rex.
And another look at our old friend T-Rex.
One last look at T-Rex before leaving the museum.
A picture Randy in his room at the hotel.
Picture #1 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #2 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #3 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #4 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #5 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #6 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #7 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #8 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #9 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #10 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #11 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill. This is a beautiful mirror!
Picture #12 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #13 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #14 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #15 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #16 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #17 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #18 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #19 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #20 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
The inside of Union Station.
A picture of the outside of Union Station.
A mural painted on the outside of one of the buildings.
A picture of some Prairie Dogs by the Technical Center where I went to class.
A picture outside our hotel window. It's 25 below zero out there!
Another view of the Mountain Lion feeding her cubs.
Some Mountain Sheep.
A picture of some Lynx.
A picture of a pack of Wolves.
A picture of a Big Horn Sheep.
A picture of a herd of Musk Ox.
A picture of some Artic Wolves.
Picture of Caribou.
Picture of some Mink.
Picture of Wolverines.
Picture of more Mountain Sheep.
Another picture of a Lynx.
Picture of a Deer.
Picture of an Elk.
2 Grizzly Bears roaming a meadow.
3 Brown Bears.
Picture of California Sea Lions.
Picture of Fur Seals.
Another picture of more seals.
A picture of Walrus. They can weigh up to 3000 pounds!
Another picture of a Grizzly.
Another picture of the head of the Fin Whale.
Looking at the Fin Whale skeleton head on.
Another look at our old friend T-Rex.
And another look at our old friend T-Rex.
One last look at T-Rex before leaving the museum.
A picture Randy in his room at the hotel.
Picture #1 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #2 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #3 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #4 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #5 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #6 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #7 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #8 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #9 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #10 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #11 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill. This is a beautiful mirror!
Picture #12 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #13 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #14 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #15 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #16 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #17 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #18 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #19 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
Picture #20 of McCormicks Seafood and Grill.
The inside of Union Station.
A picture of the outside of Union Station.
A mural painted on the outside of one of the buildings.
A picture of some Prairie Dogs by the Technical Center where I went to class.
A picture outside our hotel window. It's 25 below zero out there!
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